roller furling and turnbuckle

[Joe11688]

OMG! CUT the mast. Shudder. Horrors. But, OTOH, hmmm. You say they do this all the time? On the face of it it sounds interesting. I like the idea of raising/lowering it by myself a lot. Doesn't it introduce lots of engineering issues that I can't yet imagine?

I talked to the folks at CDI and am going to have another go at making the new turnbuckle work. I tried to climb the mast yesterday but it got really wild up there (there was a breeze) and I chickened out. I'd never have thought of cutting the mast. What do others think of that idea?

David,
Get a second opinion on cutting the mast. Give Rudy Nickerson a call on the phone. http://www.drmarine.com/ I don't know of anyone who is more knowledgeable about these boats than Rudy. He's worked for the company. When they went out of business, he bought all their molds and parts.
One of my friends owns a 23' Pearson cat boat with a keel stepped free standing tapered Aluminum mast that supports a Bermudian rig similar to ours. There is no way he could do this to his mast. The mast has no spreaders and no stays. It has lazy jacks. He's never pulled the mast on this boat since he's owned it. I understand that O'Day built some of the 23s with a pop top cabin and some of these boats were designed with keel stepped masts. A hinged tabernacle would probably interfere with the pop top on some of these models and it would surely be a hard choice for some to make. If the placement of the side chain plates is about the same as most O'Day 23s with hinged tabernacles, I don't see why it wouldn't work. I'm sure Rudy would know if you ran that by him also. I hope I didn't scare you too much.