How much of an operation is it to get the mast up and down on the average 20 foot or so sailing boat?

I have manhandled my masts up and down on boats <26 feet afloat and ashore for over 60 years. Up to 20 -21ft its perfectly feasible to do it alone and once you know what you are doing, pretty safe. I never used gin poles. dangerous if they slip, and never had an A frame. Its better and safer to have a second pair of hands.

Remove any sails and detach the boom before you start. Tie any running rigging back t the mast so it doesnt flo around and trip you.

Basic rules:

1. YOU MUST HAVEA TABERNACLE MOUNTED MAST. As above, masts hinged at the base look neater, but any twist as the spar is moving will snap it and the spar will fall. Keel mounted masts (rare on small cruisers anyway) are not for beginners, and nearly always need a crane, or a fit crew of 3-4 who know what they are doing.

2. The boat must be level, afloat or ashore.

3. A quiet day. You will very quickly lose control if the wind's above F3

4. Rig a safety line through a block on the bow fitting, and keep it taught as the mast comes up or down. This is where a second pair of hands makes things much safer.

Have a scissor prop to catch the mast as far aft as possible. safest is two bits of timber ina scissor configuration, with the feet going out to the toe rail, and the pivot high enough to hold the mast horizontal when it is down. The wider the upper jaws the easier it is within reason! This needs to be lashed so it doesnt shift half way through - it will if it can!

Once any inner forestays are detached (central or to the sides), secure the safety line preferably on a mast cleat

Detach the forestay, but DONT LET GO until you are sure the safety line is holding!

Stand behind the mast, and carefully release the safety line, and start easing the mast back. Quite often it will stick in the tabernacle and not want to shift straight away. Once it is moving, the load on your hands will rapidly increase. Move aft as the spar is lowered.

Ease it down onto its scissor crutch, making sure it is secure befroe you let go!

IMPORTANT On a 20 footer, the crutch will almost certainly be the wrong side of the balance point, so when you release the tabernacle bolt it will almost certainly want to tip backwards, and kick the mast foot upwards!

The first two or three times its much easier if you have a second and even a thrid pair of hands,

Working ona bigger boat I have raised and lowered masts with just two of us, one man on the safety line well ashore forward of the boat to steady the spar as it drops. At deck level, he will have complete control of the spar until its down to about 30degrees off horizontal, by which time the deck crew will be able to handle it without difficulty.

Roller reefing jib spar makes it defintiely a 2 man job unless you really know what you are doing! Dont try unles you want to rpalce your reefing gear each time!


As you can see from this, this is NOT something to do more than twice a season, which is why the mooring you ahve found is so cheap!

ANOTHER SOLUTION: Buy a Gunter or gaff rigged boat like a 17foot Lysander (if you can find one nowadays!). The spars are much shorter and lighter, making raising and lowering much easier. Drascobes are ginter rigged to make them easily towable for example.

Lowering the mast is something many small owners do every season, specially if (as I did) you needed to tow the it home each winter.

As i said, I have done it with a 26 footer, but ONLY when you know THOROUGHLY what you are doing.

Finally, if things go pear shaped and you lose control GET CLEAR! Boats can be fixed much more easily than your body!

This has been standard procedure for generations of small boat owners at the beginning and end of each season. People who started with bigger boats never had any of this, so dont realise just how simple it is!

EDIT. DONT even consider it if you have back trouble!
 
My 30 footer has the provision to raise and lower her own rig, on the water or ashore. I know of several owners who do it regularly. I’ve done it once on ours, easier than I’d expected. I used to do it regularly on our F27, and our Dragonfly 800. I don’t really understand the negativity to the concept. A 20 ft cruiser will have a rig noticeably smaller and lighter than something like a Dart catamaran, where the 2 crew trail the boat around, and think nothing of chucking the rig up in 5 mins at an open meeting.
 
I used to raise and lower my 24'er's deck stepped* mast while afloat in a marina berth, with me and one or two helpers.

* i.e. no tabernacle.

A cheap wooden temporary A-frame would have helped, but we managed by just connecting the lower shrouds with the bottlescrews wound right out. (Flush deck so at a similar level to the mast heel.)

I wouldn't have wanted to do this more than twice a season mind!
 
Chiara’s slave said:
My 30 footer has the provision to raise and lower her own rig, on the water or ashore. I know of several owners who do it regularly. I’ve done it once on ours, easier than I’d expected. I used to do it regularly on our F27, and our Dragonfly 800. I don’t really understand the negativity to the concept. A 20 ft cruiser will have a rig noticeably smaller and lighter than something like a Dart catamaran, where the 2 crew trail the boat around, and think nothing of chucking the rig up in 5 mins at an open meeting.
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Most people would rig the dart ashore when you can walk easily around the boat. The dart is effectively "deck stepped". Not so easy for a keel stepped mast. I wonder if the rig really would be lighter than a Dart? However its 100% doable on he right boat - there are boats where its intended you sail towards the bridge, drop the mast, coast under it and raise the mast again. But that's not the sort of boat the OP is looking at. He also doesn't have many friends likely to lend a hand - I'm not sure even the most experienced Dart sailors would try raising the mast single handed, and certainly not bobbing around at anchor.

The OP could do it, but I suspect such a PITA that on the "winter" side of the bridge he'd not want to put it back up - but then you have a mast in the way when he is talking about living aboard, what most people would already call a boat too small for that.

@NingNong247 - I understand why you are getting frustrated. People are dismissing your idea, and that hurts. I don't know the people here, but I believe most of them genuinely interested in you having the best chance of success possible and not belittling your plans for fun. Bear in mind though that you are not the first person to come here full of enthusiasm with no experience and a dream to live aboard a very cheap boat. I don't believe any ever last long enough to share their wisdom / experience with the next generation.

However most people can only really give advice from their own experience. So if they learned to sail in a club, gradually helping others before buying a boat they tend to suggest this as a route for others. They ignore that not everyone is the sort of person who likes a club, that not all sailing clubs like random newbies, and that the poster probably is more interested in finding housing than learning to tack. Do I think your idea is crazy? Yes. Have some people with crazy ideas made them work in the past? Yes. Will you learn from the experience? Probably. Will it cost you more than you expect? Certainly. Would living on a 20ft boat for more that a few weeks be horrible? Absolutely. Is it realistic to live and work (assuming some sort of very flexible IT job) on a 20ft boat all year round? Not really. Could you do that as a stepping stone to affording something more comfortable? maybe but it would take a lot of financial discipline to save it not spend it. Would you start in Jan? Definitely not.
 
Oh I wish getting the mast up on my Sadler 25 was just a 5 minute exercise #62, no way would I attempt it without an ‘A’ frame, and at least one helper to handle the furling gear, then getting the shrouds tensioned etc. it’s at leat an hour.
On my previous boat an Invicta 26 I could using a ‘A’ frame get the mast up single handed as it didn’t have furling gear, but it still took about the same time as the Sadler.
I do still drop the mast every year, it gives me chance to check everything, gives the standing rigging 6 month rest, and do any work on it.
 
Ease of mast raising /lowering will depend on the type of boat you decide to buy. On something such as a gaff rigged Drascombe Coaster (22ft), or Swallow Expedition (20ft) lowering/raising the mast is relatively easy to do on a daily basis and could be classed as a day sailor. Others, such as my Etap22i (22ft) take a couple of hours to do with a raising /lowering tackle and I certainly wouldn't want to do this on a daily basis, but could be done for say a weeks holiday. I tend to only do it once at the beginning of the season and once at the end, and then only when the boat is firmly on its trailer in low wind conditions. I regard it as trailerable but not something you want to do too often.

As has been previously said there is a lot to gain from joining a sailing club - crew on a few different boats and this will give you an idea of what type of boat will suit you and what boats will suit the mooring you are after.
Its time well spent and prevents you being disappointed with your first boat and putting you off sailing. Good luck!
 
dankilb said:
I fear the OP may have joined the transatlantic cat whisperer in the dearly departed dreamers’ hall of fame.
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Some of his questions have an element of really wanting to know, from a low base point of experience.
The biggest hurdles are size for living on, esp in winter and the practicality of a mooring, rather than alongside with shorepower.
This mast one was a reasonable ask.

The cat wisperer was off the wall.
 
DownWest said:
Some of his questions have an element of really wanting to know, from a low base point of experience.
The biggest hurdles are size for living on, esp in winter and the practicality of a mooring, rather than alongside with shorepower.
This mast one was a reasonable ask.

The cat wisperer was off the wall.
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Yeah the comparison was a bit unfair. That said, some of the questions were so basic (how to arrange local haulage) they suggest lack of the sort of (quite considerable) initiative required to do this sort of thing.

The problem is I simply don’t think low 20’ is liveaboard-able. We’re talking someone with no other residential address, here. It seems such a slim margin from rough sleeping - and I don’t say that lightly (but if you combine the motion, isolation, damp, etc. it’s probably not far off discomfort wise) - it’s almost irresponsible of us to enable it.

I’ve got nothing against the dreamers on here - only that they somewhat take bandwidth away from more interesting or productive discussions.

If this were to carry on, what’ll we get next? How to clean the bloody thing?

‘Reports’ - rather than speculative questions with commonsense answers - from some of the dreamers would be more interesting for the rest of us.
 
Praxinoscope said:
Oh I wish getting the mast up on my Sadler 25 was just a 5 minute exercise #62, no way would I attempt it without an ‘A’ frame, and at least one helper to handle the furling gear, then getting the shrouds tensioned etc. it’s at leat an hour.
On my previous boat an Invicta 26 I could using a ‘A’ frame get the mast up single handed as it didn’t have furling gear, but it still took about the same time as the Sadler.
I do still drop the mast every year, it gives me chance to check everything, gives the standing rigging 6 month rest, and do any work on it.
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You could aleays trade it for a Dragonfly. Though I recall the 800 being more difficult than our 920, an alloy wing section rather than a carbon tube. I appreciate fully that it’s boats that are designed from the ground up for DIY mast raising. If the OP chose the boat carefully, I don’t see it as an obstacle. Getting that facility along with any other requirements he may have is the real challenge. And remaining within budget.
 
#71 Why on earth would I choose a boat simply because the mast was easy to step and than sailing quality and quality of design/ and construction?
 
Praxinoscope said:
#71 Why on earth would I choose a boat simply because the mast was easy to step and than sailing quality and quality of design/ and construction?
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It was meant to be light hearted. Though the dragonfly would give your Sadler a good caning on any point of sailing, with the down side of being suitable only for hobbits below. Design and construction are impeccable, btw. Still, if you’re over 50 and over 5 ft you may prefer what you have!
 
Back on thread
If the OP happens to pop back in , he may want to look at this old thread and photos of the unsinkable , insulated , bilge keel , easily resellable , respectable , liveaboard capable Sadler 26 .
As we all say so many times , buying better initially is a far far wiser way to buy than “ cheap fixer upper ‘
Here
Sadler 'unsinkable' question
 
The idea of living on a 20 foot boat during the winter in some godforsaken creek with no shore power to use a small fan heater and a 20 foot boat isn't going to have any other sort of heating is utter madness and masochistic in the extreme. If he manages it good on him but for 99.99% of the sailing population it's not possible he would be better off renting a caravan during the winter.
 
Chiara’s slave said:
It was meant to be light hearted. Though the dragonfly would give your Sadler a good caning on any point of sailing, with the down side of being suitable only for hobbits below. Design and construction are impeccable, btw. Still, if you’re over 50 and over 5 ft you may prefer what you have!
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5’11 ‘’ and 76 so I think a dragonfly is perhaps not on my must have list. The 25 is just right for me, I can still manage it easily single handed, or wander over to Ireland with a crew, I wasn’t really complaining about the time it takes to raise or lower the mast, more a comment that a lot boats do not have easily stepped masts.
#74 as much as I agree on the qualities of the Sadler 26 and the advantages of the double skin for insulation, I would not really consider it a ‘live aboard’ boat, but maybe that’s just me wanting a bit more space for my junk.
 
boomerangben said:
Boaters on places like the Norfolk Broads shoot bridges all the time in sailing boats, some of them much larger than 20’. The well practiced and prepared can do it short handed and without stopping. So is it possible?. Yes very. But your choice of boat will revolve around the simplicity of lowering and raising the mast. Then you have to practice it.
If it is a winter, off season mooring, do you have parking space for a trailer?
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Have a close look at those Broads boats. I have not sailed there for over half a century, but back then the masts were pivoted above deck level and extended to the cabin sole with a heavy counterweight. When lowered the heel of the mast came up through an extended hatch in the foredeck. Fine on the Broads but probably not a good idea in more open waters.
 
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