I don't know how you 25 Oday trailer sailors do it?

geehaw · Mar 30, 2011

Well I just find help and raise by hand. The guy I bought it from could raise it on his own. I can get it almost to the point where it would get easier to go but not quite About to hit 54 and getting on a health kick lost 20 lbs and now ready to build the muscles up. next year i will raise it on my own I am sure.

Joe11688 · Mar 30, 2011

Mast raising doesn't get any easier as we get older. I'm finding that out now, but having dropped 37 lbs has made up for it quite a bit for me.
I can understand the challenge of raising the mast on a 25. I've helped some guys at the club raise the masts on these 25s through the years. We raised them from the stern and from the bow. I think I've raised/lowered my mast hundreds of times when I first got into trailer-sailing. I tried to make the task as easy and as fast as I could by using quick shackles on my Main sheet for instance. A press button quick release pin on my fore stay made it less time consuming. A fancy lever on my back stay allowed me to throw enough slack in my fore stay, to remove it from the bow plate without having to mess with my side stays.
Of course, raising my mast from the stern allowed me to leave the back stay and side stays connected even as I trailered my boat to the ramp, but I was still picking up the mast and walking it back from the cabin to the cockpit to put it in the mast crutch.
Then one day a new member showed up with his Seaward 22 and I watch him raise his mast at the dock one day and I was completely blown away. He had installed a small roller in his mast crutch to roll the mast back. Now why didn't I think of that?
Then he mounted a Gin Pole on his mast which included a CDI Roller Furler and raised that mast up by himself by cranking on a small boat winch that was attached to his Gin Pole. He had temporary stays attached to this home made doo-hicky that was clamped to his mast, which kept the mast from going over sideways. The wind that day wasn't all that strong but it was coming toward the beam of his boat and that mast went right up with no problem at all.
I had always wanted a roller furler on my boat, but there was no way that I could ever get my mast up with a furler on it, the way I had be doing it.
So I stole his Gin Pole idea and the rest is history.
Like I mentioned, mast raising/lowering doesn't get any easier as we get older but we can still do some small things to our rigging that can make it less time consuming like installing quick release shackles where needed, a small roller in the mast crutch works great regardless of whether it is mounted in the stern or even on the bow pulpit for over the bow mast raising. Raising the mast over the bow is kind of tough because the mast is more top heavy once it's in position to be pinned to the hinge. One of our members solved that problem on his O'Day 25 by mounting a mast crutch in the bed of his pick up truck to hold the mast temporarily until he got it pinned. I was there that day and offered to help him raise his mast, but I have no doubt that he could have done it by himself with no help from anyone. In the final analysis, with the right equipment, the job can be done quick and easy.

Joe11688 · Mar 30, 2011

RECESS said:
I don't have a problem doing it. I have a mast crutch that hooks into the grudgens. The actual raising and lowering is rather quick with the gin pole that has a trailer winch on it that allows me to stop at any time to check the side and baby stays. It is more the anxiety of knowing that the mast is one bad gust of wind from being beyond my control. I can man handle my Catalina mast with no mast raising tools. This 25 mast is just a little beyond that. This is not bad every once in a while, say once or twice a year. But every time I want to go sailing..... um no thanks.

In that case Dave, just make sure that the stern of your boat is pointed directly into the wind and use the temporary stays to hold your mast. Having the boat level on the trailer is also important. One day, I forgot to do that at the club and my mast started to go over sideways as I was raising it, even with the baby stays connected. I looked down while standing on the sliding companionway hatch and could see the mast starting to split near the tabernacle. Talk about scary situations! I had to have a guy weld my mast that year. Hey, you learn through your screw ups. What can I say? We're all human.

caguy · Mar 30, 2011

This is the system I used on my Mac 25 with a 28' mast for years. It was never a struggle. I changed the crutch yoke by welding up a roller. Instead of a bale on the mast I wrapped a rope with a loop about 7' above the mast base. I couldn't find a reasonably priced winch so I used a $25 winch from HF.
On my Cat 27 with the 31' mast I used the boom as my gin pole. Being 11' it gave me a big mechanical advantage. The secret to that one was not only baby stays on the mast but stays on the boom as well. I was able to raise it single handedly with just the 4:1 purchase of the main sheet blocks.

http://www.sailingtexas.com/Movies/Macgregor26Me/macgregor26me.html

Joe11688 · Mar 31, 2011

The MacGregor people wrote the book on mast raising. They've always had some great ideas. My friend got the idea of the Gin Pole from MacGregor boats. He uses baby stays on his boat with no bridle at the end of his Gin Pole. Myself, I have bridles connected from my pivot bridle rings to the end of my Gin Pole. I get a lot more stability.
The biggest advantage of the Mac boats is that the decks are flat and wide with the tabernacle on the same plain as the deck and all that is needed are the two baby stays. Whereas, the O'Days have a somewhat narrow cabin in comparisan, with a drop off to the side decks where the chainplates are located. Consequently, special tang plates mounted to the stays on each side of the boat are needed to attain the needed level of the pivot point of the mast. If some of the O'Day 25s don't have these triangular plates, then pivot bridles and pad eyes on the side decks are needed for the baby stays.
My mast is 27' and I need all the width I can get for my bably stays.
On our boats, because of the fact that the tabernacle is mounted on top of the cabin, and the cabin top is 12 to 15" above the deck, if you were to attach baby stays to the deck and try to raise the mast, the mast could only be raised to a certain point and the baby stays would get tight and cause everything to bind. At a certain point in the mast raising, stays wouldn't be long enough to let the mast go up the rest of the way. This is where the flat deck on the Macs are advantagious.

billh · Apr 1, 2011

Ha ha, I hear ya Dave

I have a 30 year old brother who he-mans truck tires around all day for a living. So he and I can he-man that mast on my 26 no sweat.

I do worry at times, but to date all good. Very quick and simple stepping. Have side stays attached and back stay, and simply he-man up and I run up and attach the head stay. Done in five min or so, the lifting part anyway. When alone that's a whole different story

Short story. My previous boat was a 23' Outlaw from Sailcraft of Cananda. My first year I was on Champlain Lake, and at a marina that was primarily Motor boats, and big ones at that! They really didn't know what to make of my sail boat.

I took a friend sailing who knew nothing of sailing, and I asked him to finish hauling down the main as we motored back int to the Marina. At some point he asked me when to stop pulling the line! Well the end was now in his hand! I neglected to put a knot at the end of the Halyard and he pulled and pulled till it went up the inside of the mast and to his hands! Hard lesson learned there.

So in running the line back up the mast I asked the marina to help drop the mast so I could get the line back up the mast. Help drop they did. The mast on this 23' boat was 30'! Very tall mast. So the son of the Marina owner and I (He was 30 ish) unhooked everything and we started walking it down. He was on the clock at $50 an hour.

About 1/3 down he steps out from under the mast jumps off the boat! I am left trying to now control an uncontrolled free fall of the mast. This mast stepped from the bow. We had pulled the boat into the concrete area for using a travel lift. Nothing I could do but try to control the fall. The mast came down hard, hit the bow rail, then slapped the concrete wall and the tip slapped the paved road beyond. The wave rippled back up the mast to the tabernackle and I stood there as the tablernackle exploded from the shock wave. It exploded metel everywhere.

The kid thew his hands in the air and headed back up to the Marina shop. I followed him mad as anything, and he said he was not responsible. His dad would only say I had to take it up with the kid as dad was not involved! I had already paid for the slip for the season and this was at the beginning, and they would not give any recourse at all. The kid said,, hey I wont charge you the $50 for the help!

Needles to say I did not dock there the following year. I did find a place in CT that I sent the remains of the tablernackle to and they had to forge a new one. It was a forged metel, and no replacements out there, so they simply used wax or something to create a new template and forged it from poured metel. Safe to say it was not that cheap to have that done, and and I lost two months of sailing. And again the Marina took no responsibility whatsoever.

Hard lessons all around there. Live and learn. So today when I raise the mast I am a wreck each time. However I still manage to do it each time I move the boat. Spring, and Fall, and several more times during the year.

But I have full confidence in my brother, he is like a bull, strong and steady and lifts it like it is a match stick!

I am looking at a setup I saw on here I think, wherby they strap planks to the sides and two pipes together to form a v gin pole. I like the concept and might be making that for when I have to step the mast alone sometime.

Well, happy sailing.

About three weeks for us here and in the water she goes.

RECESS said:
I just took my mast down and put it on top of the boat to prepare to take it two hours down to Carrabele Florida. We are going to spend a week on it on the hook around Port St. Joe and then 5 weeks on it this summer sailing to New Orleans and back.

It has been two years since I took down the mast. Even with a gin pole it is just not an enjoyable task. It all went smooth as could be expected but if I had to do this every time I went sailing I would go freaking crazy. The place I am going to keep it at charges $12.50 to put it in and $12.50 to take it out. After pulling that pig up a rain soaked ramp yesterday, I am thinking they can take it down their ramp with their fancy smancy tow vehicle.

If I knew what I know today, I probably would have got an Oday 22, 222, or 23. This mast is just no fun..... But the room inside almost makes it worth it.

I raise my beer to you tonight you crazy 25 and 26 Oday trailer sailors, you are a special kind of crazy!