home made whisker pole?

Birdseye

Birdseye

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Whilst my new to me Sadler 290 has a spinnaker pole, I am too old to be using it single handed, and anyway the boat doesnt have a spinnaker. So I am pondering buying a gennaker, putting it on a furler and using a whisker pole. The latter has to be lightweight so its grp or carbon and not ally.

Has anyone made their own at home? Shouldnt be too difficult a project if the necessary tubes abd fittings are available.
 
Birdseye said:
Whilst my new to me Sadler 290 has a spinnaker pole, I am too old to be using it single handed, and anyway the boat doesnt have a spinnaker. So I am pondering buying a gennaker, putting it on a furler and using a whisker pole. The latter has to be lightweight so its grp or carbon and not ally.

Has anyone made their own at home? Shouldnt be too difficult a project if the necessary tubes abd fittings are available.
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I make quite a few, but for smaller boats. Though I did also make a carbon bowsprit for our 30ft tri. You can buy carbon tube in various sizes quite easily. Google will find your nearest/best source. I had my bowsprit fittings custom made. I have a friend who did this bit, but there are many engineering shops that could do it. If you want to use standard ends, with piston clips, then you only need to match your carbon tube to the fittings you want to use. They’ll only be loaded in compression, so fixing them in is no big deal
 
Windsurfer mast? Ebay link
One piece ones go for less as they are not so easy to transport if you can find one near you.
Unfortunately the end fittings tend to be expensive unless you can get some off a scrap spinnaker pole.
 
I've made two, first one was made from aluminium tubes, a rotary clothes line pole and a tv ariel pole. One slid into the other so it was telescopic. The second I made from an old windsurfer mast.
The hard bit was finding sensibly priced piston ends, I eventually found them in Force4 Allen Piston Triggered Spinnaker Pole End 22mm ID Tube | Force 4 Chandlery they normally stock the smaller ones for dinghies, but they can get in the larger size.
Allen sizes here https://www.allenbrothers.co.uk/product/a4331-piston-triggered-spinnaker-pole-end/
 
I used a 2nd hand windsurfer mast. One warning - old carbon fibre masts often can give you tiny, barely visible but very painful splinters when handling them. I sheathed my entire whisker pole in heat shrink for this reason. No problem since. You only need an end fitting on the mast end of pole. On the sail end just have a thin rod (with nice rounded end) that protrudes 8” or so from end of pole. You can poke this through clew cringle. Works very well and can be disengaged from sail very easily from deck when required.
 
Thinking about the outboard end fitting, how about making a U-shape to capture the sheet rather than a piston hank that will seize or otherwise be difficult to remove in a hurry.
In fact I should do that myself as the end fitting on mine is too small for the sheet really!
 
Rum Run said:
Thinking about the outboard end fitting, how about making a U-shape to capture the sheet rather than a piston hank that will seize or otherwise be difficult to remove in a hurry.
In fact I should do that myself as the end fitting on mine is too small for the sheet really!
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Sounds good.
I snap shackle a separate line to the clew of the jib which goes thru the pole end. If you use a pole topping lift back to the cockpit, you can haul up the pole, dump the extra sheet and carry on as normal with the genoa sheets when you want to. I snap shackle the line then gybe over to the new tack.

The U-Shape at the end sounds ok but perhaps a snap fitting when attaching to the mast.
 
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My intention is to buy a cheap old windsurfer mast and epoxy an extra braided glassfibre sock around to to give it some crush strength and eliminate the splinter issues. The nice thing about using sock (aka sleeve) is that you can pull the ends tight to get a good fit (think Chinese finger puzzle) before you wrap it with peel ply.
 
I'm intrigued by the idea of a windsurfing mast. I'm not sure how well it will work. Windsurf masts are designed to a curve. They usually come in two pieces. A full mast is typically 370-460mm depending how large a sail you want to rig, and the curve characteristics, while not standardised across manufacturers, are broadly categorised as "hard top" or "constant curve". They are further categorized by the carbon content, anywhere from 40% to a full carbon 100% mast. A whole mast might be too long for you, in which case you might find a used 'half' at a bargain price (by some windsurfer that's broken the other half and hopes to sell the remaining useless half for non-zero pennies). Rigging a suitable end-fitting might be non-trivial without compromising the structural integrity of the mast.
 
I have 2x spinnacker poles made of CF wind surfer mast about 3m long. I made a wire sling from one fitting to the other to accept topping lift. I use the dinghy type end fittings. The poles are tapered so usually fat end to mast thin end to sail but when gybing go on the other way no problems. (2 poles as they serve as A frame for mast lowering) I also have a shorter whisker pole again piece of wind surfer mast. Trick for OP is to have the topping lift for the pole attached at all times and set in length to support pole at suitable height. So it can't be dropped over board and weight is taken by topping lift at all stages of fitting. I also stow pole against the mast so fitting at the bottom to take piston end and plastic clips to hold pole against mast. (off to one side to allow for snotter) (pole attach ring). All on a smaller boat however. ol'will
 
I got through a couple of the composite plastic ends on my pole made from a heavy duty FG wave windsurf mast .They couldn't withstand the leverage imposed by occasional jamming at the mast hoop so I now have ends by Pfieffer sold by SVB online chandlers which are aluminium forgings and cheaper than any other i could find.So far they have stood up to the loads.Easy to fit into fibreglass with e.g.ali tube making any final size adjustment.
PFEIFFER Spinnaker Pole Ends from 39,95 € buy now | SVB
Having a pole is certainly a substantial boon ,turns a miserable direct downwind run into a fast sail.
 
I fabricated a simple pole for our staysail from two proper ash broom handles. The sort council workers use. I joined them with a SS tube, screwed and fixed one end. The other pushed in and was held with a simple pin and 'R' clip. Two 1 inch dinghy ends were used at the ends and a simple 'U' affixed to the front of the mast with monel rivets.

Worked for years until I overdid the running downwind. It broke as I tried to depower in 30 kts. The beauty of it was that I sized it so I could furl the staysail with it in place. When furled it just pointed forward. It was easy to detach then.

It was too weak for the genny and not long enough.

Made heavy weather downwind sailing better. Reefed main and poled out staysail gave a steady ride.
 
A friend of mine used an old glassfibre windsurfer mast as a whisker pole on his 35’ Smack. They do bend a bit but it doesn’t matter. I would beef the ends up with some extra fibres wrapped around the outside.
 
MikeBz said:
I would beef the ends up with some extra fibres wrapped around the outside
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Due to its conical shape, I cut my length centered near the middle of the pole. I then used about a foot length from the smaller diameter offcut to insert into the larger diameter end of the pole to bring it's internal diameter down to size for the end fitting.
 
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