Friday, September 18, 2009

Mast Arrives...

Friday morning....surprise! The mast arrives. Who could resist leaving the sanding and filling and playing with toys?

C-Tech have done a great job. Everything is well designed and put together, great workmanship and....light! We asked for Two sets of spreaders, the top set just supporting the masthead when we are running with the Assymetric because Port Phillip gets quite choppy at times.

The mast comes in Two parts, joined at the hounds, which conveniently reinforces that are. I also noted that the last few inches fof the mast base are reinforced, dealing away with the engineering "Free Edge Problem" that has been the demise of more than one carbon mast. To put it another way, carbon fibre is not "Black Aluminium" and must be worked and cared for differently.

We joined the Two sections and riveted in the tee ball plates then lined up and glued the spreaders for the result below.




A word to the wise... Those beautiful spreaders are a close fit with the mast, and they need to be placed on the sections before you glue them together or you will be in a world of pain because you can't fit them later. Luckily we remembered.

We were also not thinking clearly when we ordered a carbon tang under the jib sheave box for our Two part jib halliard - the lower spreaders wouldn't fit over the tang and of course the goosneck prevented fitting from below... Doh!

Our solution after deep thought and discussion with Alex was to carefully cut off the carbon tang and smooth the area down a little so that the spreaders fitted over it. We then drilled and tapped a hole to take a small stainless steel saddle to hold the halliard (Below).


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