Hi there,

I am following the discussion about the carbon mast, to explain a littlebit we (my father and me)are making carbon masts for A-class all around the world and there is a note that there are only weak , medium and stiff masts but this is not right. If you want we are building the mast to the spec of the sailor, this means weight of the sailor, sailmaker and type of boat and there is no price difference between this. There is also a note about the strenght of the mast, the carbon mast now a days is much more superior to the alu mast. The weight reduction is one of them but when you build the mast the right way with the right material it is stronger ( can load more stress) and bends the way you want it and even on the place where you want to have the bend. This comes with an experience of building masts for 1996 and takes ofcourse a lot of years to find out. When you do a pitchpoll the older mast could break but now a days the masts we are building don't have that problem as far as we know, only when you fall with you complete weight in the middle of the mast then there is a change of breaking. The last comment is that mast we are building from 1996 are never been spray paint or so ever and there is from 1996 up to know nobody who ever did this to protect against UV because the resin itselfs is designed with a maximum possible resistance to UV. This is ofcourse not 100% because that's not possible, every resin has influence of UV, even gellcoat (the reason why gellcoat gets a littlebit yellow after a while). I am sailing with a mast of 4 years old now and there is no problem at all with that mast. My upinion is that when there enough carbon avialable next year or so that the carbon mast get cheaper and that it will replace the alu mast. Specially when you are talking about classes where development is one of the issues in the class.

Thanks,

Hans Klok