Don't step your mast like me

[Tom Peterson]

I learned something new yesterday while stepping the mast on my SC17. If you don’t use your sailboat for a couple years, you forget stuff. I had to step the mast and got all set up and then released both shroud extenders. On the 17 these are short pieces of extra shroud cable that lengthen each shroud by a couple feet. You can use these to right the 17 solo. I knew the mast would lean forward but I was doing this alone and wanted gravity to hold the mast while I went forward to fasten the forestay. I have hardly ever used the shroud extenders and forgot how much more the mast leans with them, and of course I should have just used one. So I stood on the boat, lifted the mast, got it vertical, and then it leaned way forward and snapped the mast ball post clean off as nice as you please.

Thankfully, the mast bottom did not kick back up between my legs because I think that would have been seriously bad.

Unfortunately it caught itself on the short piece of ball post and now I had another problem. The mast bottom was stuck on the post stub and leaning forward at about a 45 degree angle, held by the two quite long shroud and shroud extenders. The shrouds were tight as a banjo string and it was quite scary. The first thing I did was to take an old mainsheet and do my best to tie the mast bottom to some different points so that if it came loose and kicked out somewhere it wouldn’t kill me.

I sat on a chair and after I got done being pissed, I stared at this rig for more than 30 minutes, trying to figure out where the weight was, where the stress was, and what to do. It was just Peggy and me so there was not a lot of muscle around and I was leery of asking for help anyway because I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. After a LOT of thinking, here is what we did.

I tied a line to the bottom of the port shroud and ran it through a block at the port chain plate and then back up through the shroud eye. With that line I could shorten the port shroud enough to remove the shackle where the extender connected to the chain plate. Then I tied a line to the forestay and ran it back behind the boat, way back, so Peggy could pull the mast just a bit backward and more upright. After she did that, I took up some slack with the shroud line and tied that off. Next I removed the shroud extender at the chain plate so all that was holding up the mast on the port side was the original shroud and the line.

After a couple deep breaths, we let out the line smoothly but quickly so as not to prolong the stress as the mast came down and splashed pretty as you please in the water in front of the boat. (we were on the beach)

I should have taken a picture, but hopefully, NONE of us will ever need to know how to do this.

[pworthington]

Crazy Story. I have a few of my own with my SC-17. I broke the pivot ball once and had it welded. I made a mast hoisting rig that works super. I have a winch attached to the top of my volvo wagon (via board and roof rack). I stabilize the mast with the trapeze wires tied off to the forward beams and lift via the jib halyard. It works solo real well. I had an awesome sail today. Flying the hull is awesome.