Taking down a mast - Help needed.

[carl170]

I have bought a boat in the Hayling Island Area, and am preparing to get her ready to be brought up to Newcastle upon Tyne.

I now need to get the mast down and am unsure how I do this (safely!). Can anyone offer me any advice?

Cheers in advance (as usual!)

Carl

PS. If anyone is around Wilsons Boatyard (and Hayling Marine Services) this weekend - I'd be grateful for any advice!



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[Fin]

Mark up the standing rigging so that it's easier to find your settings when putting the mast back up. Have a good plan of how to disconnect the electrics so that you're not trying to work it out with the mast swinging around your head. (either that or you can just cut the cables like the boat yard did for me last time, which was nice....)

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[LadyInBed]

If you use a boatyard crane to drop the mast, the crane operator will / should know what he is doing and a friendly chat will elicit lots of helpful info.
You need to think about where you will put the mast for the journey
On top of the boat - you will need to make one or two X frames and maybe a padded block to support the mast.
At the side of the boat - you will need to remove at least one spreader (if you have them) and pad the mast to stop it rubbing.
Under the boat on the trailer or flat bed whatever is transporting the boat - is this possible, check with the transporter.
In all cases use lots of rope to lash everything together, especially if you have a solid forestay for roller reefing.


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[chriscallender]

How big is the boat? Unless its a trailer sailer, it might well be easier/safer to get the yard to do it with the crane ... or else park it under the branches of a big tree and start climbing ... only joking. The mast on my current boat would only come off by lifting upwards from the step so that is definitely a crane job. In that case I'd just stand back and let the guys you are paying do the work.... they will thank you more for staying out the way than "helping".

If its a trailer sailer then they are almost always unstepped by hinging backwards. The job can be quite easy if a special A frame has been made, otherwise it will take 2 or 3 people to do it safely (depending on weight/length of mast). The general procedure is to attach a line to the forestay, around the bow roller or similar and then back to a winch. Forestay is then disconnected from the boat (NB leave the other stays connected, although you might need to loosen them using the bottle screws to get the forestay undone). Thehe mast slowly lowered by the person on the winch. As soon as the tension comes off the cap shrouds the mast will have a tendancy to swing from side to side so one person on each side of the mast as it comes down to stabalise/steady it. Once it reaches about 45+ degrees of rake backwards, the line to the bow roller will no longer be capable of supporting it, so by this point the two helpers on either side of the mast need to be taking the whole weight by this point.

Its a lot easier on a day when there is no wind, if it is windy then I'd angle the boat nose into wind so that the wind is not pusing the mast sideways. .. sometimes in the yard gusts come from all directions but if its like F8 or something I would just leave it for another day.

Chris

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[wooslehunter]

Here's a way that the forestay + winch can be used all of the way down rather than only to 45 degrees.

If it's trailer sailor, then it'll be designed to manually lower and raise the mast. There should be a ring on the front of the mast near to the foot. clip on the spinaker pole to the ring (assuming you have one). Attach the halyard to the other end of the pole, and another line from this, around a pully at the bow to a winch, such that the spinaker pole is at 90 degrees to the mast. You now have a gin-pole arrangement with the spinaker pole close to horizontal. You can now lower the mask all of the way to the deck. The load on the winch will increase as it's lowered but should remain manageable. Reverse the procedure to raise it.

The pole will try to fall off to one side. You can stop this with a couple of lines from the halyard end to convenient fixings at the sides of the boat - there should be little or no load on these. If the shrouds are not set behind the mast then the chain plates are ideal.

One last point - if it's not designed for manual lowering - get a crane. If something goes wrong you'll make a awful dent in: 1 - the mast, 2 - the boat & 3 - your head.

Good luck,

Dave

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[seaesta]

Just a thought but why not sail her back? If you spend a few days checking her over and are reasonably confident that she is Ok then a few weeks delay would be more than offset by a nice one way trip.
Martin

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[Fin]

"nice one way trip"

have you seen the weather outside.........

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[chriscallender]

Err, yes thats what I thought too! Winter sailing is all very well but I wouldn't be volunteering to crew on a small boat from Hayling -> Newcastle in Feb/March. Brrrr. Especially a boat small enough to contemplate DIY mast removal!

It could be a nice trip but not for a good few months and road is definitely the quickest easiest way to get his new toy home! And probably cheaper if its a trailer sailer too.

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[seaesta]

Yep its a blizzard here and all the brass monkeys are wearing a truss - just in case. But Spring may spring soon and a young man's fancy should turn to the new season and its potential sailing delights - if not why are we doing all this?

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[roger]

Even a small boat's mast can do a lot of damage if it gets out of control.
Assuming the boat is reasonably small say 25' max. and you can find a person competent to take control, then it may be doable.
The competent person has to take charge and brief the lowering crew (preferably four people) thoroughly.
As other contributors have said, the job gets progressively more difficult as the mast angle gets lower.
Even on an 18' boat we had a nasty near miss (at least I thought so and I was the almost victim). The mast came down very fast and unexpectedly when the new owner undid the forestay and let go thinking the mast would stay up without it.
Unless you are very confident I think it would be wiser to get the professionals in.

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[claymore]

Plead absolute ignorance of absolutely everything and get them feeling sorry for you and then they'll sort it out.
Too late to make it a condition of sale?

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Claymore
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[chriscallender]

There are also a few places that have a DIY hand crane - but as the boat is presumably out of the water, I guess that doens't help?

Regards

Chris

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