Pionier 10 mast-step support: any problems?

[Krusty]

Has any owner or surveyor of a Pionier 10 knowledge of any strain or failure of the beam/bulkhead below the mast step?
The one I have (built 1972 by Southern Ocean Shipyard) has doubler panels glued on both faces of the bulkhead above the arch of the through-bulkhead access, added by one of the two previous owners. The second was based in Portugal and evidently used her for single-handed ocean passages.
This is a van de Stadt design with a fine reputation for seaworthiness and performance as a 'go-anywhere' yacht, and in that era S.O.S. had a good reputation for quality of build: it has certainly impressed three surveyors who have examined mine over the past twenty years, and I have driven her hard for over 60K NM in some quite wild waters without any sign of strain. But of course that could be vindication of the decision to add reinforcement!
I have been below deck in three other Pionier 10's and I did not notice a similar 'beef-up' on any of them.
Perhaps the previous owner did not trust a designer's calculations, (or builders?) or was just adopting a belt-and-braces strategy before ocean passage-making?
I am curious!

 

[yoda]

The original arrangement sounds very similar to the Pioneer 9. The 9's mast step is well known as a weak point and most owners have had to insert some strengthening across the top of the opening to the forepeak. When mine started to fail and I examined the original build I found two large counter-boared holes to take securing nuts for the mast step. These had removed a significant amount of 'meat' from the deck beams that support the area. Like most I now have a piece of angle iron in place to take the loading. Please PM me if you want more details.

Yoda

 

[Krusty]

Hi, Yoda, Thanks for the background on the Pionier 9. I know it was in production for quite a while before the advent of the Pionier 10, which was not a development, but a radically different design (wider beam, short keel v. long keel, etc.).
I have always understood that the '10' benefited from lessons learned from the '9', which would have included problems with the mast support. That is one reason I'm interested in any experience of strain or failure in a '10'.
A friend of mine had a '9', and we once sailed in company: performance-wise, it is also a very good yacht!