Re: mast step + partners

Posted by David Warren on Nov 29, 2007

Plan is a small-ish hardwood maststep, epoxied in the angle where bulkhead meets deck, with a round hole to accomodate a round hardwood peg in the base of the (doug fir) mast. I contemplated extending the decks to make a mast partner, but settled on a clamp-on/off thwart arrangment. I want to keep it as canoe-centric as possible. That way, all the mounting points for the sheets, hallards and whatnot can be removed along with the thwart. (the only other permanent alteration will be the gudgeons, which I'll make from a stainless double-ring-ended turnbuckle. If I cut the female section in half and set the two pieces into into the aft stem (thereby showing only two inconspicuous threaded holes), I can just thread the two ring-ended 'male' pieces of the turnbuckle into the holes when I need a gudgeons... Main hold-up is that I'm loathe to hack into a pretty, and un-injured, boat!

So far, I've made the leeboard, masts, most of the yards, a couple of blocks, and the main sail (still got to finish the roping). I'm coming up for holidays, so a burst of activity should hopefully see it sailing, at least in rough shape. I've done all the sail-maths, but getting it all perfect in the real-world will require adding to and cutting off parts of a polytarp test-mizzen, and rough pine rudder, to get the whole rig to balance properly...

In Response to: mast step + partners by theo on Nov 29, 2007

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