This unsurprisingly has proven to be the most controversial part of the project. ‘Freebooter’ came with an old Procter Beta mast. It was in great condition for its age, but it is still an old aluminium mast. As we upgraded the equipment on the boat breaking loads move to the next weakest point.
The Challenge
Our concern was whether the old mast could handle the loads. Sourcing a second hand 505 mast wasn’t cheap £1,200+, but while standing next to an old RS800 we had an ‘I wonder moment’. Would that fit ‘Freebooter’? So one RS800 carbon fibre mast made its way to Bearly Awake Central.
The mast was in ok condition some flaking clear coat but nothing serious. The underlying finish was good, it just needed work.
The biggest surprise was that the mast was exactly the right length for the boat, to the cm, with the new mast foot. Our assumption was that the 800’s rig would be significantly taller than a Classic I14, more in keeping with a modern 14.
The Plan
The RS800s use external halyards, we wanted to use internal halyards. We realised that the tapered section of the mast was bonded into the straight section, rather than it being a continuous tube. Conveniently the intersection of the two pieces was where we needed to put the jib and kite halyard boxes. For safety we laminated on a 900g biaxial carbon bandage in that section of the mast and further reinforcement two layers 250g bidirectional carbon around the kite box placing.
With a plan to get the halyards in we need to get them out at the bottom. Séldon have changed their mast foot designs. The new design uses adaptors to fit a wide range of masts. This meant we could 3D print our own adaptor to fit the standard Seldon mast foot to our mast.
The build
First piece of work was to stripe the old clear coat. This turned out to be quite simple, using a scraper we were able to remove 90+% of the coating. The remaining had to be sanded off using 320 grit sandpaper, which was the level we finished the whole mast.
On completing the reinforcement, we cut the new holes for the Shroud T-Terminals, Jib Halyard Box, Spinnaker Halyard Box and the single Pole Uphaul box. To give a better look, we used Black car body spray paint to paint over that parts of the mast where the top and bottom section had been joined. The final piece of work was to paint the measurements bands onto the, before varnishing.
We varnished the mast with Epiphanes Two-Part Polyurethane varnish as we do with all of our masts. It gives a tough flexible coating which works really well on masts and spars. Because the mast is too long for our shed, we had to do this in two stages. By doing the varnish join in an unobtrusive point we hid the break between the two coats.
Rigging
We kept the original main spreader brackets used a new set of spreaders giving us a good range of adjustment. The RS800 Hounds and spreaders are lower than the Classic I14. The spreaders weren’t a major issue, but the lower hounds meant we could only use the existing shroud mounts for the trapeze wires. For the initial shrouds we used 3mm D12 SK99 dyneema so we could fine tune the lengths before committing to wire shrouds.
D12 SK99 doesn’t creep or stretch but it is built with a woven pattern. When put under load the individual fibres flatten out causing the rope to lengthen slightly. When we changed to 3mm dyform shrouds we discovered this amounted to 3cms difference in length. Fortunately we had the ability to move the shroud adjustors other wise this would have been a costly mistake.
For the main halyard we are using a 2:1 halyard using 3mm SK78, with a new metal masthead unit. The kite halyard is the same 4mm halyard that came with the mast. The jib halyard is 4mm D12 SK99 Dyneema. For the pole uphauls we have two 3mm tails spliced into a 4mm control line.
The final piece was the addition of the pole launchers, after researching the best solution we decided on the following setup. A two pole setup using an EZI pole system. Because the boat had come out so well in its refit we decided to replace the old battered aluminium poles with two shiny new custom made poles from CFbyLandl. The poles are beautiful and fit the boat perfectly. We will do a separate post on the pole setups.
The Challenges
As is to be expected it has not been totally smooth sailing with the mast. The biggest issue has been around the top mast.
This generation of RS800 mast comes from the era of auto de-powering top masts. A very flexible top section with the idea that the mast bends in response to gusts so the sailors don’t have to.
We’ve never subscribed to that approach, but needs must. The difference between the luff round at the top of our main and the RS800 shows how flexible the mast is (See Image). The end result is we are struggling with leech tension on the main.
The benefit of using a carbon mast is we can stiffen the section by reinforcing the mast with Unidirectional Carbon. We did a first layer in the Autumn, but had a few issues with the epoxy. The results can be seen in the graph below (Top mast to the left of the graph), but it still isn’t stiff enough in the top section, so once the temperature warms up we will be stiffening the mast further.
In the mean time we have used the existing uppers attachment point to attach a mini set of jumpers, we are calling them ‘T-Shirts’. These are intended to reduce the sideways deflection at least so we can power the rig up more.
We are using 1.5mm SK99 Dyneema attached to the multi-purchases system we have been using for a fractionally rigged set of Morrison wires, which we had copied from the original mast and removed as not being needed with the carbon mast.
- Freebooter Upwind Tuning
- Freebooter – Two sail reach in 16-20 knots of wind
- Data Driven Decision Making – I14 Handicaps – The RYA’s response and the Rickmansworth results
- Classic I14 – Where we are & how we got here – The MastÂ
- Data Driven Decision Making – How to develop a fair handicap for all 14s, especially those in the Vintage and Classic fleets