Go for it Tikipete !

You could start a trend and in a few years all new boats will come with sleeved spi poles.

If it works for landyacht masts (MUCH higher loaded) then it must certainly work for spi poles.

In case my other post wasn't clear enough. In landyacht masts the tricks is as follows.

They only get tubes that have a outer diameter that can be devided by 5 and that have a wallthickness of 2 mm. With these you are always certain that you can find an adequate sleeve in getting a tube that has an outer diameter of 5 mm less then tube you want to sleeve.

1 mm difference = 0.5 mm space on either side between the tubes is practical when the tubes gether salt, dirt or small damaged spots. Probably 0.5 mm = twice 0.25 mm would be perfect but such tubes are not part of the standard extrusion package and therefor are custom orders. And the 1 mm difference setup works out quite well in stiffness and strength already.

If for some reason you want to sleeved tube to sit more straight and more tightly then just use electrical tape to place two bands on the exposed inner tube, spaced something like 100 mm apart. Basically close to either end of the exposed sleeve. This takes out most of the slack. You'll have to experiment a little with the tickness of tape. You can also cover the whole sleeve with tape but this setup can be tricky to seperate if you do it wrong or alot of dirt/salt gets in there. And two bands of tape works just as well as coverong the whole section.

I hope this is clear to everybody.

Hey Tiki,

Just measured my own pole and I can do such a setup myself as well. But best of all I thought of the following. Instead of completely seperating the two sections one can actually just unlock the two tubes and flip the front end over backwards and just store this whole package (incl. the spi that remains in the sock) as one item (in a trailer, sailbad or shed). One can leave the retrieval line and sheets attached. Basically cutting down massively on spinnaker (de)rigging time. Just fit the pole, unfold it and put the front end over the sleeve and then run the top halyard (other end of retrieval line) up the mast. Also the spinnaker can never be tied on wrong ever again.

Wouter