Stepping a mast on a 30 footer

[Steve W]

I have had trailerable sailboats for years. It's time to step up to a family boat. I've always been impressed with Catalina 30's, as a great family boat. I want to keep it on Seneca Lake, and take yearly two and three week cruises down the canal to Oswego, and then to Toronto or 1000 islands. The question is.......is stepping the mast a major ordeal? how much does it cost at a Marina, or can it be done yourself (I'm guessing no). Take CareSteve

 

[Rich]

Find the thread from Spring

Steve, go back through the older posts to try to find the long string on this topic from earlier this year. Cost is somewhat of a blind-men-touching-elephant story; several of us in the East coast are paying around $25/ft of mast height for stepping/unstepping, some folks are the West coast were claiming to get the job done for $150 bucks. I think it's safe to say your Catalina 30 is not a trailersailer and you won't be doing it yourself without access to a local yacht club crane...

 

[smily]

Try this link

I was searching on the same info for my 25' Hunter... and found the following instruction on building yout own "mast stepping device":http://www.hal-pc.org/~madmac/luger-voyager-30-ketch/mast-raising-lowering.htmI think it is really a good idea!!!Smily

 

[Anchor Down]

Wait a Minute!

Look at the frail, round mast on that Luger. Then consider the beefy mast section of a C30. We have to be talking 30% more weight here. And how tall is a C30 mast, anyway? The physics are forbidding.I would not get any big ideas in my head about doing this myself. This sounds like a huge and expensive (and hospitalizing) endeavor to me.I'll pay the yard HAPPILY to let them use their huge machinery to do this job, instead of jury-rigging some Tinkertoy system out of washers and wood blocks nailed together.Insanity.