I finally got around to checking my mast for leaks. Overall it did fairly well but I did find some bubbles coming from the base of the mast (from somewhere under where the DH's are mounted on my H17) and also a few bubbles coming from the comptip joint (but this was positional).

In looking at the comptip joint area, it looks almost impossible to add silicone sealant to the part of the mast inside the channel where the bolt rope slides. Anyone know of an easy way to do this?

Since the amount of water that enters the mast from these two locations is fairly small and since it's not easy to find the leak at the mast base or fix the leak at the comptip I'm thinking the best course of action is to just periodically drain the mast. On an interim basis, I just removed the two screws holding the sail prefeed bracket in place at the mast base and a few onces of water came out. This would have been easier and more thorough if these holes were located at the very base of the mast, but they're not (which requires that you shake/tilt the mast to get it all out).

So I'm thinking it might be a good idea to drill and tap a hole at the mast base just above the bottom mast plug. That way, even with the mast up, it would be easy to periodically drain the mast. I could use the prefeed bracket screws above as an air vent or add another hole/screw for that purpose.

Two questions:

1) Anyone know how thick the bottom mast plug is? If I know this, I can easily measure up from the exposed bottom of the plug to locate the drain hole at the very bottom.

2) Am I overlooking anything here? Seems like a simple solution with no drawbacks. I wonder why masts don't just come that way since they all eventually take on water. Anyone already tried this and have any good/bad experiences?


Thanks,

Jerry