Bent Mast

[Jeff Smith]

My 25' Mac sailed fine for the last two months of last year. However,when I stored the mast this past winter,noticed that the mast was bent, about eight inches, side to side. I'm wondering if this will have any effect on this years sailing, or is there anything I can do about it.

 

[Clayton Fawcett]

Bent Mast Should Still Tune Straight

Jeff,Depending upon the severity of the bend in your mast, you should be able to straighten it with your shrouds. Assuming that you can get it straight by tightening the shroud on the oppsite side of the boat from the bend (ie: bent starboard, tighten port), you should not see any loss of performance. Use caution to not over tighten your shrouds though, over tight shrouds will cause huge compression loads on your deck. (If you bend the compression post in the cabin, you went too far. Just trust me on this one...)

 

[jcherubini]

This is not good.

I would NOT recommend trying to salvage a mast that has been kinked enough to exhibit a real bend (being visibly out of true). Aluminium will work-harden through being bent, which means it will hold its new shape and stay strong like that, but the danger will lie in trying to straighten it back out again. Forcing the work-hardened bend back the other way will require MORE effort than it took to get it bent in the first place, and if you force it the result could be catastrophic failure. That means you could kink it harder, crack a hole in it, and then wish you'd worn a motorcycle helmet that day.Macgregor used notoriously CHEAP aluminium extrusions. (In fact Mr M actually bought raw extrusions, cut them to length in the shop, and pop-riveted hardware to them rather than having a sparmaker do the labour.) The good news about this is that a spar is easily and relatively inexpensively replaced. Source a few sparmakers and enquire at a few boat yards. Don't pay retail (meaning, don't ask the boat yard to replace it for you) and don't grumble about the cost as long it's in the $100s and not $1000s.Please trust me-- if the spar shows ANY kinking at all relegate it to use as a flagpole in the back yard. Under NO circumstances, no matter what the hearsay is, should you attempt to fly sail on it underway after trying to straighten out an actual kink by tuning the rigging.J Cherubini IICherubini Art & Nautical Design Org.