IMHO the enemy is the sun. The cold of winter and the dark of night is not to be feared. The boat and tramp handle the offseason fine when they are under the snows. Take the mast down, ensure that there is no point loading under the hulls and tip the nose of the trailer up somewhat to encourage run-off.

I was just reading on the ahpc site that you cannot store a wingmast up, I started panicking. Glad to see that you have figured it out.

A guy at our club left his sails up last year and was having a dream that his boat was floating away. He woke up and it was.

Matt

Wouter- I have used the spinnaker halyard to stabilize the mast- It's already there and you don't need to do no stinking throwing of a separate line! Just take one end of the spi halyard and slip it through the space between the diamond and mast and tie to opposite corner of rear beam and the other end slips between diamond and mast on the other side to other corner of rear beam-

Kirt

One trick whenever you might have to leave sails up is to completely release the downhaul (and make sure there is no tension remaining). I also recommend this in between races out on the water if "parking" head to wind- the rig will calm right down rather than trying to constantly fill on one side or the other.

Kirt

Many thanks for all of the advice, it has been a great help.
I now have the problem of winter coming and am wanting a project. I think widening the boat to F16 is the most logical. Can I use my old mast section to replace front beam? Am I crazy to look at using a second hand A class carbon mast as a replacement wing? Am I crazy to look at ex carbon masts as replacement for front beam and glue rather than bolt? I notice some 18s are doing this for a more rigid platform.
Cheers, Lester

Your welcome and please pay us back by helping another newbie in the future.





Yes. You'll have to get a new dolphinstriker strap and a new rearbeam but all other fittings and parts can be re-used.




Only if you can't find a mainsail to match. You can only sail solo then as the A-cat mast will not withstand double trapezing. In the way of drive and balance you should not have to many issues. At least no issues that you can't solve be raking your mast backward or forward. The A-cat boom will be to short however, so you'll need to fix something up here as well. Not a biggy, however.




These will be too small to fit properly in the beam landings and I'm not to confident that teh mast section will like this new role much. Darryll, you're more experienced in carbon mast layup then I, What do you think ?




What 18 's


Wouter

Hi Lester,

I would recommend putting WRC timber inside A carbon mast as I did with "Altered".

As for using Carbon mast for beams, the shape and layup would make big differences so it realy depends. Don't forget F16 rules require that the hulls beams can be dissasembled from the hulls, so gluing is a problem.

Regards Gary.