Challenger CB Lifting Bar Replacement

Aug 4, 2013
4
Having experienced three jams of the lifting bar in the CB pipe over 16 years due to CB ground touches, I believe we should replace the lifting bar with a continuous cable from tackle to board. I am also generally aware of Tom Young's experience with Christmas (though I can't find his article).

Has anyone else replaced the CB lifting bar? What advice can you give me? Why did Alden design it this way to begin with? Can we leave the lifting bar in place and just replace the shackle (which is what jams in the pipe)? Any advice would be most welcome!
 

TomY

Alden Forum Moderator
Jun 22, 2004
2,758
Alden 38' Challenger yawl Rockport Harbor
Hi Peter, I think I've seen ARIA in the Fox Island Thoroghfare twice this season! She looks great.

I was hoping someone would chime in on this. I'm curious, what sort of circumstances did the board get jammed? I know well how it jams and sticks but yours must have been gentle?

I've often wondered if there would be a way to keep the bar but I just can't figure a tackle arrangement for those 2 clevis pins and plates that connect the bar to the cable.
 
Aug 4, 2013
4
Tom, thanks for your reply. Fortunately all three of our CB groundings have been relatively gentle -- that is the board has not been forced up as much as it might have (and was in your catastrophic case). Having been lucky three times tells me I need to do something about this. In one case the jam did loosen the connection between the CB trunk and the bottom of the vertical pipe, which caused a slow leak at that joint.

As for a way to keep the bar, we need to figure out some way of pulling the cable back up when the weight of the board comes off. I have some thoughts on that, especially since I am concerned that in a grounding where the CB is forced all the way up, there is still no room for the cable and I wonder if this wouldn't cause similar consequences?

I am wondering if a better solution wouldn't be to leave the lifting bar in place (perhaps with a flexible sleeve around the trulock connection to prevent capsize of the shackle) and change the tackle arrangement so that there is a spring that keeps a continuous tension on the cable and pulls it back in the overhead channel when the weight of the board is taken off. This would mean making a new terminal block for the cable that would slide freely on the screw but be restrained forward by the position of the current terminal block. Thus the normal position of the new terminal block would be just abaft the current block that is moved by the screw gear, but if the weight of the cb were picked up from below, the spring would draw the cable back toward the cockpit.