SkipperJer,
What size (length) wire ties did you use on the wires in your mast. Did you bundle the coaxial cable in with the electrical wires, or did you attach wire ties to them each independently?
Here is what came out of my mast today with a lot of work. All of the foam was in good shape, but in addition to the more-or-less closed cell foam tubes, there were periodic wads of dark green open celled stuff. It was quite a job to get all of that foam through mast, particularly below the spreaders where lots of bolts protrude on the inside.
All for the stuff in the two images below came out of my mast today. Just removing this stuff made me feel that putting foam inside your mast is a bad idea. I can just guess what the weight aloft might have been if that stuff was wet. Thanks to my three-section extendable aluminum boathook I was able to drag the foam out when I could get it a few feet below the spreaders. It took hours of very frustrating work. The dark green wad of foam on the far right was one of three similar wads that came out with great difficulty. These wads were nearly the diameter of the mast, and they were open cell. Part of one is still in my mast at the spreaders. I am pulling it through the spreader holes piece by piece with a screwdriver and a pair of long nosed pliers. The pile of dark green foam shards in the image on the right came out through those holes. More to follow, before I try to force the final green wad down the mast.
Even the tubular stuff wads up if the bottom end of it snags on a bolt, Don't use it.
The spreaders are off because I discovered that the mysterious red and white wires went into the spreaders. They could not be pulled without removing the spreaders, pulling four strands from one spreader and two strands from the other, and then cutting the wire.
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