Wheels' New Mast

Well I have been rather a busy boy the last few weeks. It's been a long story for us. About 2yrs in all, but it is finally coming to an exciting end with a new mast.

First a little history. The boat is a 45ft FC Hartley Tahitian Ketch and she was launched in 97. She was built (we think in Cromwell somewhere) and fitted out by Miller and Tonnage in Dunedin. The unconfirmed story we have heard is that she was motored up to Picton, but upon reaching Cook Strait, the weather got nasty and when the wife could finally step foot onto solid land, she vowed never to go back on a boat ever again. So she was sold. The next owner seemed to have little clue about upkeep of a large boat. It spent a few years deteriorating tied to a swing mooring. But what I disliked the most about that owner, was what he covered up with paint. A year later we had paint falling off exposing mold, rot and even green slime and dirt that they had not bothered to sand away, just painted right over.

But that's another story, back to the mast. The boat had never sailed beforehand. When naive little us bought her, she had the masts up and the sails lashed to the booms. The main winches were below stored away. The yacht broker showed us over the boat and expressed that the sails were all new and crinkly still. Stupid me trusted him. I did ask if the sails could be removed and taken to a sail maker to be inspected. That never happened with the usual excuses of being really busy and others looking seriously at buying the boat. So we ended up buying the boat with the sails still lashed to the booms. Not long after we found the rot and I uncovered a real mess.

So with much money and hard work, I finally had the topsides looking pretty good. And so it was finally time to get back to the getting her sailing part. Although I had spent much of my teenage years sailing a paper tiger and most of my Adult years in runabouts, Sailing a big boat was new and I found myself placed on a very steep learning curve. You know the one? You usually have to pave it in Red bank notes to get traction. I mounted the winches and then found that was only the beginning of gear I needed. We finally got the sails up. Well the first thing that happened was the clay homes of Mason flies fell out. We soon found that things didn't seem to look quite right and so I removed the sails and took them across to Doyles in Nelson to a wonderful Sailmaker, Bud Nalder. Well it seems that these so called lovely new sails were in fact so old, that the headsail was hand stitched and was way past it's use by date. But hey, nothing that money can't solve (I hope you can sense the tone of cynicism). It just so happened that Bud had a sail just come in from a guy that sailed to NZ from New Caladonia. The sail was made by North's but it was not what the guy wanted. Whether it was what he asked for is another story, but anyway, he asked Bud to make him a new sail and was happy to sell the old one for $450.00 We pulled it out on the floor and it was soon apparent that this was not an old used sail. It was almost brand new and not a mark on it. We felt it was worth much more than the asking price, but all we had was $500 and I asked Bud to at least give him that. The owner was happy and we were more than happy. Bud made a few changes to our Main and recut the Mizzen to suit. We came home with the sails and soon had them bent onto the booms and our brand spanking new Furler.

Away we went for our first sail. Now OK, so I haven't had much in the way of big sail boat experience. In fact the only other big sail boat I had sailed was when I was 12. That was what captured my imagination of sailing. But surely all those years of sailing a Cat could not have been a total waste. However, no matter what I did, I just couldn't get my main to fly quite how I liked. The rig certainly needed attention. So into the books and info on Rig tuning I dived and soon I had the rig all set. Or so I thought. But nope, still not getting the sail right, I learnt all about mast rake. But I couldn't even get that looking right. I kept getting this S bend in the mast and couldn't work out what I was doing wrong. Many suggestions were thrown around by other sailors in the marina, but nothing really worked out. In the end out of desperation, I sort the help of a professional. Geoff of Waikawa Rigging and Marine came and had a look. First thing he said was, “This mast is way to light for this boat”. Huh?? “Well the rigging is such that once you get the correct tension in the wires, the mast is being compressed and it kicks out into an S shape. That's why you can't get the sail to fly right.” “ By the way, it will eventually fail”.

A new Mast???? How the heck are we ever going to afford a new mast???

I had a few suggestions over the next few months of how we could lose the rig and claim insurance and one guy (very experienced sailor by the way) even volunteered to come out and do it for us. But I am not that kind of person and I also figured that with my luck, when the mast went over, it would probably go through the boat and do even more damage. Plus it was hard enough getting insurance in the first place.

Then one day, up comes this mast on Trademe. It was perfect. The right size and weight of extrusion and a bit longer than I needed, but hey. It was a Seldon mast that had come off an Elan 43. A slight ding in the side was all that was the problem. I bought it for not much more than scrap value, but now how to get it down the Blenheim. I was a member of a Sailing BB and one of the members said he could get it on one of his ships. I thought he must be a crew member and most unlikely that he would be able to get a 17M mast on some small freight boat. Well I asked him to find out more info and he returned a shipping schedule. It turned out he was a Captain and his boat was actually two large ships of which he was in charge of all the loading and unloading of. The Vessels the mast went on was Tasman explorer and I shall always be grateful to Chris for getting my mast from Auckland all the way to Wellington (via Timaru) free of charge. All we had to do was motor across to Wellington and pick it up, strap it o the side of my boat and bring it back home.

There is a saying...”The sea makes your schedule”... and I didn't follow the rule. We had a slight problem with the mast being landed on the wharf in Wellington and I couldn't get onto the wharf to pick it up. So I had to have it trucked around to Seaview and we had to be in Seaview ASAP to pick it up. So off we went. 13Hrs it takes us to motor from Havelock to Wellington and the weather forecast was not so hot. A large storm was off our East coast swinging 8M swells onto the coast. But a small break in the weather with a westerly funneling through the straight was supposed to drop the sea state so as only a large swell would be present. Then a new Southerly front was due late afternoon early evening. And that is exactly what we had for the majority of our trip across. That was until we reached the area of Karori Rock. My chart showed a great deal of turbulent water, but I was used to that over my side of the ditch, or so I thought. The wind was now coming from the Southeast and we had this huge Southerly swell I estimated at around 4m. But as we arrived off the Karori rock area, the sea's started standing and the strangest thing began happening. We would get a huge swell stand in front of us and then a large wave would rush across the face in one direction and another in the opposite. Every now and then the two would collide on the face of the big monster and they would break and cascade down the face of the big one. We were being thrown around like a sock in a washing machine. What seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived into the shelter of Wellington harbour. We picked up the mast, spent the night in Seaview telling tales of our trip to those that came to help us with the mast. Some local knowledge gave us knowledge of when the best time to be around Karori Rock was and our trip home was just the big swells with no washing machine.

A year later again and we are finally at the point of being able to afford to get the mast stepped. That is if it does not cost too much over my budget. The first step was to get the old mast unstepped and then I can try and sell it.




I have spent many weeks making components and anodizing them.
Starting with the mast step itself. The mast is deck stepped and the step is a boot kind of thing that the mast slips into. I have a fitting on the back that the Vang connects to. The idea is that I can fit other components to the “boot” in the future if I want to go down some other path of leading lines from the mast.



The mast head was a complex beast and stil needs to be cut and welded into the mast.











The mast spreaders were the next and the hardest to anodize. A little Kiwi ingenuity was required in the process. But in the end the result was ok I thought.


To read the final installment click here.