Mast Issues & Renovation

[Tony G]

Ah, here is the mast issues.

I think you would be miles ahead to reuse your existing sail track. It's there, it's one piece made to fit for your mast. Filling the holes would be a good move if you slide the track up or down a bit because you want to get to new metal under it. What about removing just enough material to allow you to switch to machine threaded screws for the increased surface area? I have read of several people switching spar fasteners to machine thread for the increased surface area. I personally think our spars are just fine as far as attacments go because they are so heavily constructed relative to our boat. Arguably there is less surface area in the SM screws but it seems to be a moot point. It seems we should be more critical of our cast aluminum fittings instead of our fastenings.

The 18" track is for our OEM goose neck to slide on.

Yup, the Tides track slides right over our track and does exactly what you said. I personally hope that cracked track you refered to is a fluke and not the standard because I got one rolled up in the shop awaiting installation. The sail slides and batten cars were a fraction of the cost of some of the other systems we looked at. At the time, Joe Cooper at Hood was pleased with the Tides sysem and scored us a discount as part of the package price of a new set of sails. I don't have any personal experience with the Tides system other than moving it from one shop to another. I did ask Tim Lackey a bunch of questions before I got one and he spoke highly of it.

Forgot to mention it is made of UHMW plastic and the slides are stainless. The batten cars are stainless slides too. There is supposed to be considerably less friction travelling up AND down for the mainsail. Several people have claimed they no longer have to head-up to reef the main. I'm all about less stress though...

[Commander 147]

Ebb and Tony G

Looks like several of us are headed generally in the same direction as far as the Tides Marine sail track. I've been reading everything I could find recently on the half dozen or so differant versions of similar products out there and when it comes to bang for the buck I keep coming back to Tides Marine. I have read that the track will degrade over time and 10 years is about the time I have read that you might want to consider replacing the track. The track itself is I believe less than half the cost of the system. So amoratized over a period of ten years it might cost you 40 to 50 bucks a year to maintain the system as far as the track goes. But all the reports I have read the people that use it really like it. Easier to get the sails up and down and since that is something you do at least once each way every time you go out it adds up to a pretty nice benefit. And the people who are going to build my new sails sell the system so I can get a reasonable deal on it with the sails.

Here is a video where someone is installing it on their mast.

http://sailmagazine.com/boatworks/in...ne_sail_track/

[Rico]

Ebb,

I've gone through these mast track decisions and I am very happy to have kept the original track. You can see my decision process and how-to on the Mephisto Cat thread:
http://www.pearsonariel.org/discussi...5-Mephisto-Cat

As far as the fasteners; after quite a bit of research, I went with SS Rivets to replace the original fasteners...

I race on a boat with the tides marine track insert and although it works ok, I am not at all tempted to do this to C-155...

Sorry I do not have time to elaborate further now, but I'll check back here later for any follow-up issues. I'd be happy to provide any insight on my end!

[Commander227]

First... Tony... I am very worried about your still rolled up plastic track. I have never installed the Tide System however with other plastic luffs and CDI furlers I unroll them and set them in the sun the day I get them. Then roll them into one giant loop in the opposite direction and leave them that way for a day. Then I store them flat. I have received plastic luffs that have been rolled too long (like two months) and have not been able to get them good and straight. They take a set and are kinky when straightened. there are many different types of plastics and I won't pretend to know one from another but it seems like the type that would work well on a CDI would likely also be used for the Tide System.

IMHO:
1. Coffee made from yesterday's grounds is only slightly better than drinking straight water in the morning.
2. Unless the old tracks edges are sharpened by use and wear it will work just fine and continue to be a reliable method of attaching the sail to the mast. There is little friction with metal on metal and there is enough clearance and slop where salt or dirt build up will not gum up the works like plastic slugs in a sail slot. The slides should be stitched to the sail with webbing. If you use plastic or metal shackles you will over time rip our your grommets and prematurely age the sail. There is no good way of keeping them from binding and twisting when hoisting and dousing. Especially in a blow. The webbing does not mind twisting and cannot bind. My first thought would be to tap the existing holes up to 10-32 if there is enough clearance with the slides over the larger fastener heads. Other wise I see no downside to moving the track to drill new holes. I liken it to my old F150 with the single barrel carb on the straight 6 engine. Not fast. Not sexy. But reliable and easy to work on.
3. Tide System: People who have it seem satisfied and my distributers talk highly of it but i shied away from it for a couple of reasons. First, you are still relying on your existing track so you are not getting away from having to remove/reinstall it or getting away from any problems you may think there is with it. Plastic gets sticky and things do not like to slide over it when it gets dirty or gets gouged. You must keep cleaning and applying Sailkote or othe lubricants to keep it working smoothly. Not a huge deal to make some sort of scrubby or wipey thing to pull up and down with a halyard...but still. Plastic expands and contracts a lot with tempature. Plastic ages and gets brittle with years in the sun and elements. I also think it's kinda ugly.
4. I went with the Harken micro traveler track. I love it! It fits the mast great, looks sexy, allows me to spend even MORE money getting the Harken Batcar system on my next sail. what's not to like? Well...It's expensive....I spent about half of what you'll spend as I am in the fortunate position of buying wholesale and got it on clearance to boot. It works really smooth but I cannot say it is more reliable of requires less maintenance than the old track. But dudes...it is sexy.
I installed it with 8-32 machine screws and used some of the old track holes to pop rivet in a tube for a wire chase.

That's my view.

I am scrapping out an old quarter tonner that has a great mast of roughly diameter and wall thickness as the Commander.
It has a great welded up mast head fitting and really well built goose neck and spreader fittings. As it was keel stepped mast it is quite long. So I am going to build The Princess a new stick three maybe four feet taller. I'll leave the jib the same size so it will be fractional and the roller code zero will be mast head. Can't wait.

Mike C227

[Tony G]

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike. Whether I like what I hear or not, the truth is a lot easier to deal with in the end. And I'll admit, every time I look at that box I cringe for the same reason you mention above. There will undoubtedly be some memory in that plastic and IF I can deminish it to a point where it is not a factor that will be a process. When I first got it I weighed the options of leaving it boxed or sliding it onto the mast which was sitting outside in full sun going through those very extreme temperature changes found in Northern MN. My hope is that the full-length support of the OEM track will provide enough "pull" to ease the process. I'm betting some low and long heat on the inside of the roll will be necessary. Let's just see if it is effective.. I have admitted under my breath we may have a new length of track but this time I'm going to wait until the mast is ready for it. It is the sad reality suffered and denied by many people that "my life gets in the way of my dreams."

You betcha, the price of the superior Harken system drove me to other alternatives. If price had not been as large a factor at the time I could have justified or rationalized choosing the Batcar system. But as you stated, you fully realize the benefit of wholesale pricing (and clearance pricing didn't hurt either). Ah the old Cost versus Value argument. Maybe one more thing I would do diffrently if I were making the choice today.

Mike, another modification to the princess??? Dude, you must lavish gifts upon Boo for her to be so understanding! If not, she must be the real Princess.

[ebb]

Jerry, TRico, Mike, TonyG

Thanks guys mucho!
Mike, that 22mm (7/8") Harken CB track looks really nice! It is 1/2" tall with an indent base.
What kind of rivets do you use to mount that track?
Hole spacing in track is 4". But there is any spacing retrofit that will allow, I'm assuming, use of the original 3"??? Can't imagine how that works.
That track is half the price ($400) of the polyethylene StrongTrack.
Polyethylene is a happy plastic but like all thermos are going to age in the sun and heat.

The Harken track is aluminum. Would think there eventually would be some wear issues with that if the matching hardwear is stainless. There is alot of esoteric expensive stuff to buy to get that match. And the StrongTrack likewise.

So it looks like I should stay with the original antique track. The Shaefer seems vastly over priced. I'm only asking it to last another ten years or so, and I like the bronzey patina, which I've never noticed on stainless before.
May move and drill new because it's difficult to drill out broken screws, that's a lot of metal to ask a small cobalt bit to hole.
It's an easy upgrade to go to #10 RHMS and retap to fine thread. And certainly in theory like the screw fastener over the rivet. May use a sticky non melting butyl tape to caulk the long seam, so riveting would be problematic. Real seal.


My little yodamota voice tells me
I'm going out of the box painting the mast.
Will use the Alodine and Alumiprep 33 - BUT then go straight to the final coat (2 or 3) with a product called Aluthane - no epoxy primer. We'll see how smooth I get the metal after filling and sanding. If I do epoxy, it'll be with ShermanWilliams ProLine 4055 sandable. No chromates.
Aluthane is a thin alumnum filled urethane paint with what appears to be a good rep sticking to stuff (that urethanes ususally aren't known for.) However it doesn't coverup booboos. It's been around awhile and used successfully to overcoat crappy industrial iron alloys. (see epoxyproducts.com if interested. Found here a testimonial using it on AL spars, but nothing long term. Always like that, isn't it?)

I'm going to try an epoxy filled 'atomized aluminum' filled paste (Albin LabMetal from Caswell) to smooth my corroded and holey masthead. Have an idea to poprivet on a stainless collar (or headband actually) across the area on top of the sheave slot that corroded away - and now halfast filled with another repairmetal. And fill all the holes I can with it down to the bottom of the mast. All aluminum stuffing and gravey. Wonder if the Aluthane will bubble and squeek?
The mast will look galvanized I'm told when coated.

A far far cry from Rico's stripped top peppermint cane!!!

My first time doing this to a metal mast.
And will need all the help I can get out of you guys!
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ___________
Mike, Thanks for that tip on webbing factored into slide attachment.
Is there a BEST slide for our OEM track? Oil impregnated bronze? I think I noticed on a Harken info that the373/2720/2751 track uses 2" long s.s. slides, which, me thinks, would end up quite a tall stack.

Tony, Obviously I don't know the StrongTrack material like Mike does. He is probably correct that the material will take a set in its shipping carton when rolled up tight long term. Especially in a wide rage of Michigan temps. Your shop fotos show your mast on the wall.
If you have a clean surface INSIDE the mast, you could unroll and store the StrongTrack there.
If you can get it in there! I can imagine you will have a difficult time unrolling the plastic. It might even twist which you don't want. So you may have to wait for a very warm day. Putting it in the mast may over time allow it to relax to its former self enough
so as not to KINK when you eventually shove it onto the OEMT, as Mike points out.
TonyG, haven't checked back to yer fotos, but if you still have the old track on your mast,

why not get the StrongTrack on the mast NOW. No better place to store it!!!!

[carl291]

Mike A taller stick may just be the hot setup. When I bought an Electra I missed getting the stick, which was a new dyer&dyer 30" taller with a roller furling. The owner let it go for $100.00. Anyway the PO who had installed the mast owned a sail loft and cut a set of sails to fit the new mast. He located me through the Electra registry and we sent a few EMs, he told me on a cruise his 5 day average was 175 miles/day, that's flying !! He also had the hull faired to where even the rudder grudgen strap was faired smooth .

[Tony G]

why not get the StrongTrack on the mast NOW. No better place to store it!!!!

That's just what I did! I had to put this one to rest. This stuff is the most well behaved plastic I've ever had to work with.

The length I ordered is a little longer than our OEM track so there was about 3 inches that wanted to curl. I put a clamp on it just to see if the memory eased in a few days. Overall the Tides Marine track slid on with very little resistance. Once I started it only took about five minutes including stopping for an action photo.

[Tony G]

While we're on the topic of mast renovation, here's a couple of photos showing what appears to be an exit for, what I assume, was a wire halyard. There are a number of holes drilled in the immediate area. Three horizontally above the hole and two on either side of the hole. All of this is about 6'-6" below the sheave box. About three feet below that are three holes on both sides of the mast that run in a line down and aft. These look like they might have held a set of tangs for running backstays. I dunno. You tell me.

[Tony G]

And what the heck, here's the slide hardware for the main sail.

[Ariel 109]

While we're on the topic of mast renovation, here's a couple of photos showing what appears to be an exit for, what I assume, was a wire halyard. There are a number of holes drilled in the immediate area. Three horizontally above the hole and two on either side of the hole. All of this is about 6'-6" below the sheave box. About three feet below that are three holes on both sides of the mast that run in a line down and aft. These look like they might have held a set of tangs for running backstays. I dunno. You tell me.

That's not the hole for the wiring of the mast head light? Those three horizontal holes look like ones for masthead light bracket. The others? Maybe for deck lights.

[Tony G]

Ben,

The mast head wiring comes out of the extrusion about 3" from the masthead fitting and what appears to have been the steaming light was mounted at the level of the spreaders and is evident by the two balanced, or evenly spaced mounting holes and the off-center, sloppy wiring hole.

The main hole here is about 3/8" in diameter and drilled at a downward angle. There is some minor scuffing on the mast that is visible in the photos where "something" was wearing. It also appears as though it was lead aft as though the "halyard" was tied off to a side stay or shroud.

I imagine the three horizontal holes held a forestay tang and the four hole held a block. However, there is no sign of an exit on the lower section ot the extrusion. Being it is common knowledge that our spars are heavy for our size could this be an extrusion from a larger boat that has been cut down to a 30 foot mast? That's what I keep leaning toward.

[Ariel 109]

Steaming light, not masthead light! Tony this is the one off my Ariel. Kind of looks like what would go where those three horizontal holes are on your mast.

[ebb]

Smutt is the dark corrosion, haven't found a descriptive word for the white stuff. [Skudge?]
The dark matter is said to come from the chemical alloys Cu, Si, Zn, Fe, Mn. Mg used in extrusions. The white stuff?? Isn't bauxite white?

Looking at TonyG's mast, he hasn't got smutt.
Looking in on commanderpete's photos, one close up shows dark spots on the spars that might be smutt.

All over the stick in my possession, top to bottom, is a double layer of dark and light. An equal amount of deeper dark corrosion and a less corroded top. It is, with the 5" Makita ocillator, very hard to get into the 2 micron deeper stuff using aliminum oxide sanding disks to remove the dark aluminum oxide.

Knowledge knot knowitalls, including myself, always point out (ad nauseum) that you don't paint a mast because aluminum makes its own corrosion protection by forming oxide on the surface.
While this is true, it also is a bunch of useless BS. Anybody who looks at the mast I'm attempting to restore can instantly see that in the years it spent wired to ltlgull in a saltwater environment the aluminum did a real lousey job of protecting itself from corrosion. So this knot on the end of a line of BS is meaningless. And many unprotected masts turn up with the same problem.
It is not true that a mast protects itself with an oxide coating. The oxide anodizing it once had, if it did, also did not keep the spar from serrious corrosion.

So I'm looking for something that might dissolve the ingrained material. We are talking about oxide here that is in the same family as sapphires and rubys - it's next to diamonds on the Moh scale...but about 5 times less hard. All in all, Aluminum oxide is pretty hard.

So I thought that before sanding the dark matter should be removed, here's the short list of possibilities:
lemon, lemon and salt crystals, white vinegar, cream of tarter, baking soda, toothpaste (Crest), Hershey's chocolate [NONE OF THESE WORK]
- then there's Oxalic acid, Falseteeth soak, Flitz, NeverDull, toilet bowl cleaner, low PH drain opener, TSP, sodium hydroxide (lye, caustic soda), Penetrol, Galium and distilled H2O [none tried yet]
-then ferric sulphate, sulfuric acid, ammonium bifluoride, hydrofluric acid, phosphoric acid, methylene cloride, chromic acid and, of course, nitric acid. Nitric acid dissolves all metals. [Rediculous]
What would you do?

So many toxic choices, so little time to try them out.

I think my problem here is that aluminum is considered a porus metal,
so I don't want to have little nasty wet molecules of alkali or acid lurking deep in molecular crevises only to show up 6 coats later in the finals... just from a rediculous caustic cleaning episode.

And still in line before I get to any epoxy primer, there is the degreaser wash, the Alumiprep etch wash and the Alodine conversion wash. Still confused as to what self etching or non-self epoxy primer to use when and if or
befor (after?) the zinc chromate, strontium chromate, zinc phosphate, zinc oxide epoxy primer time arrives.
Most of those primers only come in 2-part gallons at $150 each. If ordered on line HazMat S&H gets a stiff surcharge.
I've heard that donkey urine is pretty strong...

[Ariel 109]

Hi Ebb,

I've found that the best way to sand aluminum is with these sanding pads (see link) on a polishing machine. These will make easy work of all the imperfection on your mast. And would do a much better, quicker job than oscillator or random orbit sander.

http://www.fournierenterprises.com/c...&cat=13&page=2

The secret of sanding aluminum (most metals) is to use a lubricate like WD-40 or beeswax to prevent the sanding disks from getting quickly dull and filled with reside. This really works, try it with your little Makita.

Follow your paint manufacturer's directions!