Sailboat Owners Forums

scan0001 Before you construct one of these, get a measurement of your mast tabernacle bolt spacing. Then figure on the size plate needed to accommodate that spacing for you holes.
222 Tension bar 3 If there is any give to your cabin roof due to the pressure of the shrouds bearing down on the mast, you may discover that your shrouds are getting loose. I truly believe that this problem can be avoided altogether by installing a strut similar to this one. This strut was installed at the Fall River Ma., O'Day factory in 1986 when they built my boat.
222 Tension bar 2 This strut is just a 1" stainless steel pipe with a flat spot on one end with two holes in it for bolting to the galley cabinet post. The other end has a welded flange with two holes for attaching to the mast tabernacle bolts. The bolt spacing on the welded flange might be different depending on what make mast and tabernacle is on the boat. My boat came with Z-Difusion (Z-Spar) internal halyards and I suspect that the tabernacle plate on the cabin may have a different bolt spacing than an O'Day 222 with Dwyer spars.
222 Tension bar 1This tension bar is not a mod but I felt that it should be in this album because earlier O'Day 222 models particularly the 1984s didn't come with this tension bar for some unknown reason. It would behoove the owner to try and have one made and installed. I think it is very important.
Finished extrusion 002 This is the finished extrusion. Well,-almost finished. I later added two more bolts to it. What you see is a Trex plug that fits into the mast and it's sitting on a 1/4" Aluminum plate with two pieces of PVC trim board bolted to the top tabernacle plate. I cut some kerfs on the edge of the Trex where it fits into the mast. Hopefully, any water that gets in the mast will drain right out through these kerfs. I don't know if anyone out there has ever done this. Maybe I'm the first. All I can tell you is, so far it's worked out fine.
Tabernacle 002 Shortly after I left that other welder with the dollar signs in his eyes, I thought about making up the 2" with 1" thick pieces of Trex. I had to use the Stainless Steel plug for now so that I could get back out on the water. My son came down with his Makita crosscut saw with a carbide tip blade and he cut the bottom of my mast. I then made up this temporary mast extrusion and was back on the water in less than two weeks. This extrusion is a bit heavy and it's ugly, but it worked. It was worse than ugly. It looked down right fugly. :)
DSC01267 This isn't the original mast tabernacle that came with my boat when I bought it new. It came with an el cheapo French made cast Aluminum extrusion with a small sheave at the bottom for the internal Jib halyard to pass through and I hated this set up with a passion. After losing my mast back in the 1990s out of Newport RI, I had Rig-Rite in Warwick RI make me up a new mast. This time I wanted it made up to my specs and that included a stainless Steel hinge plate. This plate is a Dwyer and the utility plate is a Kenyon, I think. He told me to mount a block on the cabin to make up up 1-1/8" under the hinge plate so that my upper stays would fit. He gave me the plates and I mounted them to a 5"X7" Teak block like what you see in the pic. The rigger had to make a mast plug to attached the upper plate to the bottom of the mast. I wish he'd have made it out of Aluminum instead of Stainless Steel. Years later my mast started corroding and I had to take it to a marine welder. You can see in the pic where he welded, but the whole bottom of the mast was thin and getting ready to blow out.
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