Winter cover with mast down

[john6206]

Hey Everyone,

The Catalina 320 I bought this year came with a nice winter cover.
I’m having them remove the mast this year for some repairs / upgrades, but the cover requires the mast up.

Im thinking I could McGuyver a mast out of 4” PVC, and then create some kind of frame to lift the cover out of 2x4s or more pvc.
My only concern is that the cover also ties off to the standing rigging for support - that will also be gone.

Has anyone done this? Is this an unwise approach?

 

[Tally Ho]

My cover uses the boom and a spinnaker halyard for support. You could come up with something to approximate the mast/boom (like a big, long sawhorse) and then add a support from the “mast” to the bow pulpit to support the front part of the cover. My cover has ties around each shroud, but only to get the cover around them and ”tie them shut”. No support on my from the shrouds.

If your cover is like mine, you will have several openings around the shrouds, topping lift, etc that will be open to the elements, but better than no cover at all.

Greg

 

[Scott T-Bird]

PVC pipe won't hold up under your snow load. I tried it one time for a pool cover and it failed miserably. It gets very brittle in the cold and won't carry the load. It will fail as soon as you get 4" of snow. Cover frames for sailboats with mast down are typically metal frame, or lumber I suppose.

 

[fred1diver]

When I designed a cover for a customer, the mast was to be removed for moving the boat in the off season, so I planned the cover with the mast and made a fake mast with a 4x4 up to the height of the boom, mocked the boom with 2x4’s lying on the 4x4 and supported in the cockpit, you can and should use the topping lift or halyard to help support it. Hope this helps.

if you need more ideas, let me know, if you have pictures of th boat and cover it can help find solutions

 

[Project_Mayhem]

I supported my C30's cover with 2x4's last winter. I used two vertical supports - one in front of the pedestal and the other at the mast step. There was a 14' 2x4 between the two verticals. The front had a 14' 2x4 between the mast step vertical with the other end resting on the anchor roller. Horizontal stability was added using 1/4" line between the 2x4's and various points of the boat. High chafe areas of the 2x4's were covered in carpet, poorly. It worked far better than expected

 

[BarryL]

Hello,

As mentioned, I don't think that PVC is right material.

My boat came with a very nice cover and a complicated frame made of conduit. The cover was designed to allow the mast to be up or down. The frame hold up the cover. It must have been expensive to have made. It worked great the first year. The second year the boat was in the water. I was not able to run lines under the boat to hold the cover down and a large section got destroyed in a gale. I tried to get the section replaced but the company never responded to my calls or emails.

Since then I have had the boat shrinkwrapped when on land.

Good luck,
Barry

 

[JRacer]

Mine is similar to Tally Ho's. The only time that I put it on with the mast down, I had the mast laying on the bow pulpit and a wood crossmember spanning the stern pushpits and draped the cover over the mast bow to stern. All I got.