This is a bit of market research, we are toying with the idea of making a 2 part carbon mast, mainly for shipping boats abroad, but obviously it could make it easier to transport for sailors as well, do you think there would be any interest in this product?
I have trouble seeing when that would come in handy, except for shipping your boat in containers or with lorries. If you have the boat on a trailer, it's not much hassle driving around with the mast.
Would I buy one for those reasons, afraid not..
If I had a car-toppable boat now, then it would be a must.
I would think that a two piece carbon mast might be attractive to some but might best be offered as an alternative to a one piece mast since many would not want it. Besides the obvious benfit in shipping deomestically or overseas, it would also be useful to those who would like to garage the boat (ie, off season) in order to store the mast inside with the boat. As I'm sure you know, these days all windsurfing carbon masts are two piece and when well designed and constructed there's no disadvantage compared with a one piece. Breaks at the joint are generally an issue only if the mast joint is not properly seated during assembly. Another beneift of a two piece mast is that, particularly for large masts such as used for catamarans, there is the potential to replace only half of the mast in the event of breakage (ie, pitchpole in shallow water etc).
You could even have you own "quiver " of mast tips to compensate for the one up two up scenario and the windy and not so windy days, great idea and I am sure it would probably help the building process slightly as moulds wouldn't be so long nor so unweildy nor require such a big oven to cure them in.
John, I`m assuming you are thinking of a spreader setup on the mast, meaning that diamond wires need to be retensioned each time you break the mast down for transport. I see that elsewhere a spreaderless carbon mast has been discussed, with built-in prebend. I think if you combined the two you`d have a mast that can be taken apart and put together more easily, like the windsurfer masts. Unless you design the diamond wire system to be retensioned to your last good setting easily, and one which allows quick fitment and removal of the diamonds and maybe even the spreaders. Of course all this talk is meaningless for me, unless you can retail it for around 200 pounds ! But yes, I think it would be a marketable idea, if only the cost of carbon would be more reasonable. When two-piece windsurfer masts came out they were looked on rather sceptically, now you will struggle to find a one-piece mast.
i think the italian bandini spar producer (or bimare itself) long time produced two part A-cat carbonmasts (with this idea behind to have soft and hard tops for different winds, crewweights etc...) they are said to had the undesired tendency to switch back to two-part mode when in use, either in strong winds or when capsized (actually I have seen this happening quite often when sailing A in Italy), very often also the lower part at the fitting to the upper part broke. besides that those masts seemed to have been never as competitive as for example a saarberg mast just made for your weight. so for competition sailing I think it will be hard to come up with a competitive two part mast. for more fun orientated sailors that might be a topic.
regarding shipping, when we imported our four taipans from australia to china the cost difference between a 20 and a 40 foot container really played not much a role...
if you can break it down to a length that you can transport it in a plane (hand luggage) than surely this might immideatly help to increase the amount of carbon fibre catamaran masts... ;-) oh yes, and just as the serious part of this feedback was finished already a sentence earlier, lets dream about kevin costners F60 featuring an impressive unfoldable power rig... just imagine... there comes light wind and you can enlarge your mast and sailsize 3 more metres... 1st of april? I admit, I am to early...
Some years ago, a friend of mine, homebuilt an a class cat, we sleeved a carbon fibre tip onto the aluminium mast at the hounds, this was however permanently in place (riveted) and incorporated the hound fitting. But there was no problem with it at all, performed very well. An idea at the time was to make a three piece mast one join at the spreaders, one at the hounds. But the only reason for the idea was because of the length of the mould we had made.
You are of course familiar with that most popular single handed racing dinghy, the Laser. It has a two peice aluminium tube mast and they do offer two different size tops, for a smaller mainsail. It is completely unstayed and rarely break. I would think you could come up with some sort of very thick carbon sleeve mast section, that along with stays, would work on a cat, and not be too fragile. The biggest advantage might be the ability to run a shorter top section for those really windy days, but then you would need a second main or a reefing main sail.
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