New Mast Picked Up

19 March 2008

Well, I picked up the new mast finally from the builder, Bob Keeley, who is a lovely old bloke - one of those rare old 'masters' who are still working at what they love doing in their 70s.

The keel stepped, masthead rig mast is made of KO10 profile of 100mm wide x 133mm deep, 2.6kg/m so is no light weight profile and will be very stiff. This is the profile that Bob Keeley always supplied the original Holland 25 builder, Doug Sharpin, for masthead rigs back in the late 70s and was his second last extrusion. However, even Bob didn't have an original mast plan for a Holland 25 so I had to start from scratch measuring the yacht and existing sails. My sails were from a fractional racing rig so I decided, to create better stability, to shorten the luff and leech of the main to lower the centre of drive of the main and remove 2.5 square metres from the main's area. I also lowered the boom closer to the deck so more leech than luff was taken out of the main giving a boom that should raise up at the rear for headroom. I know this is not optimal but studying some force maps of mains, I've seen low pressure areas at the lower rear corner indicating less drive from that area. We'll see how it goes eventually.

Driving a trailer with 10 metres of mast (I'm glad it wasn't much longer) across the city was an experience and raised quite a few strange looks at a big long black stick on a white trailer behind a black SAAB Aero, with a wheelchair on the roof! There was not much clearance between the mast and my wheelchair, so I had to beware of dips as well as turning corners. Anyway, I made the trip of 30kms across Melbourne without problems, dropped off the mast at the yacht club then returned the trailer to the mast builder.