Electrifying my mast?

Joe11688 · Apr 28, 2011

1977oday22 said:
OK, heres this years project/upgrade.
I purchased one of those combo mast/deck lights and an anchor light and thats one of my projects for this spring.
My mast is currently horizontal on some "saw horses".
As most of you know I have an O'Day 22.
I want to install the wires inside the mast.
Any ideas how to begin?

Kev.

The ideal scenario is to use a conduit inside the mast but I have yet to find a good solution for securing it in there. Don Casey, in one of his books, has a solution, but I'm not crazy about it, so scratch that one.
I have internal halyards in my mast and my wires enter a hole with a rubber grommet near the mast step. Then, near the top of my mast, there's a small eye strap that is riveted to the inside of my mast in which the wire goes through and is taped in place.
If you're going to use four conductors, you should use two duplex marine wires and tape them together about every foot and a half. If you plan on having a coax for you VHF, now is the time to run it. You can tape it to the two duplexes. Take the mast head off and anchor one of the duplest cables to the eye strap or whatever you choose, --possibly a nylon cable strap would work. Then snake the wire down the mast and have it come through a hole near the tabernacle. You'll need to figure a way to grab the other duplex near your spreaders. I hope that you don't have foam in your mast. It could present a problem. Some masts were filled with foam.
Once you get the wire in there you should be able to remove enough slack in it so that it doesn't flop around inside and bang back and forth. At least you don't have to worry about halyards breaking wires inside your mast Kevin. I did away with my steaming light a few years ago because of this and I removed the feed wire inside my mast. So I've had a little experience at rewiring my mast. The rigger had used zip ties to tie the wires together and when I reworked my wiring, I just used regular black vinyl electic tape every foot and a half.
This is just one idea. You may be able to come up with something else better.
If your mast tabernacle is screwed to your mast, use thread cement on the screws when you go to put it back together.
That's about it. Good luck!
Joe

Joe11688 · Apr 30, 2011

1977oday22 said:
Thanks again Joe!, I'm going to try and tackle it this weekend, if it ever stops raining, we've had pretty poor weather the past few months here, April rainfall set a new record. It's rained everyday for the past few weeks. Not really complaining, I feel sorry for the poor folks who got hit with those tornados.

My pleasure! We're finally getting some nice dry warm weather here, so you should be getting it soon.
Here's some pictures of those small eye straps. You could probably use a couple of machine screws and nuts to hold the strap to the side of the mast near the mast head. One of these straps is solid metal, which in my opinion would be better for the wire than the thin metal strap.
Actually, you could use a nylon wire strap with one small nut and bolt. I'm using a wire strap at the bottom end of my boom to attach my bungee sail tie jock, and it's been holding up great since last year. Good Luck!
Joe

Joe11688 · May 7, 2011

Nice job Kevin! I think that you're going to have better luck with the steaming light wiring in your mast than I had in my mast. I think that my internal halyards caused the demise of my steaming light wires and this is why I removed my steaming light a couple of years ago. I haven't been doing much night sailing and motoring for the past ten years now anyway.
I had some left over bottom paint that I wanted to use up, so I used it on my hull yesterday. Our club docks and mooring balls are going in today and if my mooring is OK to use, I'll put my boat on it next week because I'm all set to go. I'm going down there this morning to hang a 400 watt flood light on a 15' pole next to club house for them. I'll probably connect my new mooring pendant line to the mooring chain after that. One of my jobs in the club is to splice three strand pendant lines for the members, free of charge to anyone who is in need of splicing. They only need to supply the Nylon line and the thimble to be spliced in place. Good luck!
Joe

Joe11688 · May 10, 2011

Beautiful! I just splashed my boat yesterday.
Thank God for the Gin Pole because it was blowing out there while I was getting the mast up. I'm going to come back in a couple of days and put my Gennie on the furler and go for an overnighter on the river. Fortunately, they got the ice machine going and I was able to bring home some ice for my food stuffs on my next trip to the club.
Smooth Sailing!
Joe

Electrifying my mast?

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