Sailboat Owners Forums

DSC00434 Here's a pic of my old Gin Pole. Anyone can make one of these. It doesn't have to come apart and you don't need to use stainless steel hardware. The Gin pole provides the angle needed to raise your mast by using the Jib halyard and a boom vang or mainsheet blocks. You could also mount a small boat winch on the Gin pole and use that to pull your mast up. I have the yoke tied to the mast near the goose neck fitting and the end of my Gin Pole is about 1" to 2" from my forestay when the mast is up. If the Gin Pole is too short, the boom vang will have a tendency to pull the yoke out of the mast once the mast is up. If you set the Gin Pole too low on the mast, the Gin Pole will be too long and you'll have trouble reaching the end of the pole to snap your bridles in when the mast is laying horizontal and ready to be raised. For this reason I chose to set my Gin Pole so that the yoke is near the goose neck fitting. Note how close the blocks of the boom vang are in this picture. Before I inverted the line locking cam on the pulling block, I used to extend the boom with a wire tail piece that cam off my back stay that was connected to that triangular plate. By inverting the cam on the block, I was able to do away with the tail piece and be able to connect the block to a shackle on my bow stem chainplate. This gave me more space for my blocks. The is another reason why the Gin Pole needs to be set near the goose neck fitting. If you decide to use a boat winch to pull your mast up, you could mount the Gin Pole lower but the lower the Gin Pole on the mast, the longer it has to be.
DSC01153 This pic shows the collar and the end of the Gin pole where the bridle connections are made. In case you're wondering, that triangular plate used to be attached to my backstay and I finally found a better use for it. I use the top hole to snap on my Jib halyard, and the middle shackle on the bottom is used for my boom vang attachment. The pulling block of the boom vang of course is connected to the aft hole of my bow stem chainplate. I unbolted the cam on the pulling block and inverted it so that I could snub the line off by pulling up on the line instead of pulling down on it.
DSC01151 The pipe flange is screwed to the bottom of the wooden yoke but I wanted to make it stronger by drilling a 1" hole into the bottom of the yoke and have the pipe go beyond the flange and into the wood about an inch of depth. It's a good idea to secure the yoke to your mast with either a rope seen in the picture, or a bungee cord.
DSC01150 I used the same wooden mast yoke from my other Gin Pole. Also, there's a 1/4" hole in the collar and mating pipe for a fast pin. I really don't like using fast pins but for this application, it OK.
DSC01156 I made my first Gin Pole out of white oak years ago an it served me well, but I wanted something just as strong that would be lighter and more compact so I asked my son Steve to weld me up this stainless steel Gin Pole. It's made of 1" stainless steel and it has a 1-1/8' x 6" collar welded to it which enables me to take it apart for easy stowing on board.
DSC01040 In this pic I'm using the boom vang that came with my boat which has double sheave fiddle blocks and a cam lock. You can see how far it's stretched out with the mast laying down. I needed to change the line on this vang to be able to spread these blocks out this far and I believe there is about 55' of braid line on this vang.
DSC01279 On an O'Day 222, the side stay chainplates are aft of the mast as seen in the picture. Where the snap hook is connected to the stay, I'm using a long thin stainless steel "D" shackle attached to a turnbuckle toggle and this is where it has to go. The other snap hook is attached to a pad eye mounted through my deck on both sides of my boat. Note* In making up your pivot bridles, you need to make all the rope adjustments first before mounting the pad eyes. This requires that you snap one end of the pivot bridle you are make up, into the stay shackle and also snap it into the pad eye and just make your rope length adjustment by stretching out the pivot bridle while holding the pad eye to the deck until you can make the ring height and rope length adjustment by eye balling it. Remember, what we need to do at this point is get the rope lengths even and the ring needs to be even with the pivot point of the mast. Once you've attained this, mark the location of the pad eye on the deck with a pencil and mount it. After you've completed the first pivot bridle you can use it as a pattern to make up your other bridle. Then you can test it out by connecting it to the stay shackle on the other side of the boat and the loose pad eye by stretching it out and eye balling it. Both pad eyes should be about the same distance away from the chainplate on both sides of the boat. When you're able to get it right, then you can mount the pad eye on that side of the boat. I'm no expert on this, believe me. The fist time I mounted the pad eyes on my deck, I screwed up and mounted them in the wrong place. Consequently my bridles were uneven and I had to remember that the short rope on each bridle had to be snapped to the pad eye on both sides of the boat. After a year or two I decided to remove the pad eyes and use this procedure in order to get my bridles even. This required boring four new holes and filling the other four holes with Fiberglas Epoxy mixed with filler. Hey listen. I have several other holes on my deck where I had removed useless hardware, another four holes ain't going to make any difference. I just want anyone who reads this to understand where I'm coming from. I've been through the school of hard knocks just like you have and I've had more than my share of screw ups.
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