Broken Mast!

[GreenLake]

Looks like the front bolt is safely above the deck. I bet you could even grind a bit of a channel or groove into the sides for the other two. The mast partners (the opening) has some serious extra laminate in my DS1 and I would expect/hope that this is the case for you as well. It's not going to fall over an play dead with a bit of a groove.

And, yes, you are correct that tapped screws like this are probably overkill, and you might as well just rivet. The rivets only prevent the tabernacle from falling off when the mast isn't installed. I don't think they contribute anything to supporting the compression loads. That's done by resting the tabernacle casting on the mast profile...

So, this may even be a non-problem. However, if you find that your boom is too low, or that you can't raise your main as high or your turnbuckles have reached the end of their adjustment without creating enough tension, you can always dig out this thread and start over

Good luck

[Alan]

My mast was too short when I got the boat. Once I figured out that there was a reason the original 3/32-inch stays AND the 1/8-inch replacements from D&R wouldn't tighten up, I got a three-foot length of DM-284 mast extrusion from Dwyer Mast, here:

https://www.dwyermast.com/items.asp?cat ... M-284+Mast

So, the mast is too short. How much too short, and how long to make it (these questions not necessarily having the same answer)? I checked the class-legal dimensions here (page 11 of the PDF):

http://forum.daysailer.org/pdf/dsbylaw3.pdf

I don't intend to race (hah! I'll be lucky to find water to sail in at all, but I digress...) but the class dimensions seemed like a good starting point. The longer stub left me room for some useful hardware:

Longer mast stub with halyard block and vang padeye - resized.jpg (186.88 KiB) Viewed 4316 times

I used the class-specified height of the spreader attachments as a guide for proper height, and everything else fell into place.

And, if you cut ever-so-slightly too much off your new section, you can adapt GL's approach, or just put a step on the cuddy sole, under the bottom of the stub and on top of the compression post.