All those wires inside my mast gotta go!

[John]

Ah yes...Mast wiring....I teach Marine Electronics for our local Power Squadron. (A great source of good info). The material I have says that code and ABYC standards call for minimum wire size of 16 ga stranded. I have not seen any recommendations for minimums in the mast. 12 ga makes sense.

I have seen 2 suggestions but have tried neither. The first was to buy the longest heaviest wire ties you can find and then use 3 at a time to make a spider every few feet. In other words, tie them so the ends are about 120 deg. around all the wires in the mast. This assumes you can drop all your wiring and then pull it back in the mast with the spiders in place. The second is a variation on the foam suggestion. Buy the foam split tubes that are used to insulate pipe runs in cold places. Wire tie them in place and slide them up as far you cana nd keep placing on the wires until you can't get them to slide up any further,

I replaced the wiring for my steaming/deck lamps last year. I used tri-plex cable in the mast but did not try either method. I am thinking of trying the tubes. I used a snake to pull the cable into the mast and that was fiarly simple. I had to use some light gauge wire to pull wire up through the compression post.