Mast removal

Jun 14, 2004
40
Hunter 376 Bay City
I'm in the process of buying a Hunter 376. It will have to be shipped by truck so the mast needs to come off. It looks pretty straight forward...just unscrew the turnbuckles and unplug the wiring.

Hiring a rigger seems a little expensive, as I've done this on my previous boats without much trouble.

As I understand it, the rigging adjustments should be marked before dis-assembly, but other than that is there any reason I shouldn't do this myself?

This is a 1998 model. Does anyone have info or photos of the wiring inside the mast base. I assume there must be connectors in there that unplug. If anyone has done this job, perhaps you can share what to expect. The touchy part is usually getting enough room to unplug the wiring while not pulling the mast up so far it jerks the wires out and damages something.

Then there's the uncomfortable feeling that the mast could slip down and cut off your hand or fingers. Some sort of temporary support would be in order for safety.

There is a little access panel inside the boat at the compression post with wiring connectors, but I doubt that will do any good. It looks like the wires are sealed in the deck.
 
Jun 14, 2004
40
Hunter 376 Bay City
Just to close this out... the wires were sealed with silicone caulk in a 2" long tube. When the mast was removed the caulk "plug" pulled out quite easily. I was pleased that whoever put the mast in last used the correct caulk, vs something stickier. I cleaned up the old caulk and re-caulked with silicone.

The de-masting and re-masting was pretty straight forward, but wish I had taken photos of the rig set up. That would have saved some time trying to to decide if the diamonds run forward or aft of the shrouds. The Hunter manual seems a bit ambiguous on that.