Mast Gooseneck compressed into mast

[lhodge]

Glenn

I have a 2006 H36 that my wife and I have been sailing since 2006 along the east coast and the Bahamas. We are getting ready to return to Chesapeake Bay for the summer from the Florida Keys and are readying the boat. When checking the rigging I found that the gooseneck has 'compressed' into the mast at the lower portion of the mounting plate, the top part of the gooseneck is fine. No cracks in the mast. Except for a couple of weekend trips, we have sat on a mooring. Coming down we had to run the ICW due to weather so it isn't like we have beatup the boat over the past 6 months.

I have about 4 or 5 inchs of rake in the mast, the turnbuckles had been tightened with a small wrench and a screwdriver so not too much tension. The Selden rigid vang was bottomed out, has been since being launched by the dealer. I moved it out the boom a bit to get some end play in the vang.

I am hoping I can adjust the shrouds and safely get back to the Chesapeake and then have my dealer take a look. Any suggestions for now?

I have left a message with Hunter and I am waiting for a call back.

thanks
Larry

 

[ghen]

Larry,

Do I understand that the mast wall at the bottom of the goooseneck has been bent? Can't figure what could have caused that. The Selden Mast on that boat is very beefy. I have seen that in a race boat with a whippy mast and that was caused by a jibe that had the boom dragging the water in a crash. I can't figure that the vang had anything to do with it. If at sea and I had to nurse it home, I would loosen the rigging and take out most prebend to reduce compression load. I would not sail until I could get it fixed. I cannot tell from your description how bad it is. If I saw it, it might scare the daylights out of me. That is not damage to play around with.

 

[lhodge]

Thanks for the comments. Your description of the mast condition is accurate. I just placed a straight edge along the mast and the gooseneck 'compresses' approximately 1/8" into the mast at the lowest point. Everything above and below that point looks fine. I don't know what is considered 'bad', I'll guess any damage to the mast is bad. I'll likely just reduce the prebend and motor back up unless I get to a rigger first. There is a Hunter dealer in Miami as well as Charlestown that I know of.
Should motor sailing with just a jib in light (10kt) winds be OK?

Thanks Larry

 

[ghen]

You should be fine motoring. I have to be very conservative here however. A fix that would actually make it better than new is to epoxy and screw or rivet a doubler that pancakes over the gooseneck area. That was or is common practice on wimpy race boat aluminum mast. Even though it is only 1/8 deep, the metal going vertically on the sides of the goosneck has been tortured. From a structural point of view, I venture to say you are sailing with a hole the size of the gooseneck in your mast. Don't mess around with that.

 

[Ross]

I wonder from a great distance it this is "new" or if it is newly discovered. It seems to me that it would require a substantial event to cause this and not the sort of thing that wouldn't well imprinted on the memory. Is it reasonable that this was damaged when the mast was down and not noted until now?

 

[lhodge]

Ross

All questions I am asking myself. I find it hard to believe I would not have seen it sooner had it happened earlier. The good news is that Hunter has me in touch with Selden and they now have the serial number of the mast and pictures of the problem for review. It does seem that a repair may be possible and doable by myself.

Cheers
Larry

 

[Johnb]

Larry,

I would be interested to see the pictures you sent to Selden. Would also be intersted in the outcome.

John Brecher

 

[lhodge]

Here are a couple of the pictures I sent. The one comment Hunter made was not to use the boom as a hoist, wrong compression loads. I had not.
Larry

 

[seadaddler]

Again

I think some one recently just had the same thing happen on not sure what size boat but the picture looks like a twin to what you show and he mentioned he had to send the mast to Selden for repair,shipping cost was $$$$$$.
Any one else remember the same thing here recently.
Nick

 

[ghen]

Wow! I would like to know what caused that. There is some force involved there somewhere. That is not good. Depending how handy you are with tools, that can be repaired but Selden needs to make the call on that. They are the experts on spars. I have fished a few racing spars out of the ocean and it is hard to do. It almost looks like the spar is not only dimpled but out of column?

 

[Ross]

Am I seeing what could be described as a horseshoe shape section for a mast? It appears to my eyes that there is a slot in the mast that is bridged by the goose-neck fitting. I didn't realize that anyone made the goose-neck fittings from plastic but they seem to be adequate. I sometimes sit on my boom when the sail is furled and Nancy has the helm. My mast is a continuous aluminum oval tube with an attached track.
Those apparently unsupported edges seem vulnerable to being easily bent. Are these extrusions normally heat treated? If so, could this one have been missed?

 

[ghen]

The gooseneck is cast aluminum. It would take so much more than human body weight to create a dimple like that. Something in the gooseneck had to bind and use the lever ability of the boom to create that. Trust me, Selden is so very conservative in their safety factors it borders on indestructable. We have had so minor problems with Selden mast it is unimaginable. They cost more but they are virtually problem free.

 

[Rich Stidger]

The other mast damaged post that Seadaddler saw was:

http://forums.hunter.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=106533

It involved a 2006 45CC with a Selden furling mast.

 

[Greg1103]

Hi Larry see my post last week under Big Boat Forum "Mast Migraine". Feel free to call me when you arrive in Annapolis 301 706-3100 Greg

 

[Greg1103]

Hi Glenn AS I mentioned in my post "Mast Migraine" Big Boat Forum 3/30, I'd like your opinion regarding the block configuration of the main sheet. Can the blocks be safely rearranged, reconfigured in such a manner that the risk of mast compression could be minimized? Move the boom's block and sheet attachment forward of the arch's block? Then the winch force would be directed into the arch and not the mast?

 

[ghen]

Greg1103,

You have the right idea about how to minimize compression loard from the boom but the fact is, the amount of compression it would take to dimple like that would nearly impossible with the mainsheet. The mainsheet block posiotion is set in part to try to maintain even leech tension with various traveler settings.

 

[Scott B]

Am I seeing what could be described as a horseshoe shape section for a mast? It appears to my eyes that there is a slot in the mast that is bridged by the goose-neck fitting. I didn't realize that anyone made the goose-neck fittings from plastic but they seem to be adequate. I sometimes sit on my boom when the sail is furled and Nancy has the helm. My mast is a continuous aluminum oval tube with an attached track.
Those apparently unsupported edges seem vulnerable to being easily bent. Are these extrusions normally heat treated? If so, could this one have been missed?

Ross, it's In-mast furling... .

 

[Ross]

Ross, it's In-mast furling... .

I understand that but I still think that the edges of the slot maybe more easily distorted than would be the case with a continuous section.

 

[Scott B]

My point was that there are more facts to this than can been seen on this type of forum. If there is an issue with the mast we should know about it, but we need ALL the facts and not speculate on something that we are seeing in a couple of pictures.

Trust me, Selden is so very conservative in their safety factors it borders on indestructable. We have had so minor problems with Selden mast it is unimaginable.

 

[Witzend]

The forces involved to cause this are significant as noted. The only scenario I can envision which would have caused this is a combination of, an overly racked mast that has the vang pulled on hard while sailing a broad reach, which then is unintentionally jibed in a fresh breeze. The force of the boom slamming over would cause the mast to want to flex further, that may have caused the dimple.