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**Pete7** · 10-02-2019, 04:20

Looks like a great choice

thomm225 · 10-02-2019, 04:39

At times, I wish I had a pole mounted on the stern.

I have a dodger but the attachable bimini is way too low.

The first leg of my weekend sails during the season is about 20-30 miles to the North so the Sun is directly on the cockpit. Wind is Southerly.

I have started tying on an adjustable Forespar to one of the stanchions then tying on a tent top cover just to block the Sun because it gets so brutally hot.

Sometimes how a thing looks becomes secondary.

It's the same with outboards. Do I buy an $8,000 diesel engine for a boat I may not keep or an outboard at $1,500?

The main thing is getting away from the rat race for a few days and making the boat move for free without the use of an engine.

Plus the Sun high without getting fried

fish53 · 10-02-2019, 05:00

I like a "stern pole", good place to put stuff out of the way and fortunately I care little about aesthetics, next boats going to have a pilothouse and a stern pole.

jibstay · 10-02-2019, 05:04

I have dual backstays and I use a backstay pole for my radar and GPS antenna.

It doesn’t affect tensioning the backstay and it keeps both the radar and GPS level.

http://www.questusmarine.com/self-le...mounts-13.html

I have a 3HP equivalent ePropulsion Spirit 1.0 electric outboard on the stern pulpit. The battery and the propulsion unit together are fairly heavy and cumbersome, but I just mount the propulsion unit on the dinghy first, then snap on the battery.

**Dockhead** · 10-02-2019, 05:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jammer

Many of the brokerage boats I've looked at online have a stern pole. Usually it has the radar, some other small antennas, and an outboard motor crane for the dink. Some have lights. Some have the loudhailer. Some have a wind generator.

I guess I subscribe to the school of thought that visual design matters, and I don't especially like the way they look.

Are there other ways to get things done, or is the stern pole a necessary evil?

If you bought a boat that already had one, would you keep it?

Of all the appendages for mounting stuff above deck, the pole is probably the least windage, least weight aloft, and least ugly. Nevertheless, a pole does mean windage, weight above the CG, and ugliness.

I have neither arch nor pole, but having a pole would offer a lot of advantages, like: (a) probably better place for the radar; (b) place for all kinds of antennae which are hard to find a place for, and which might otherwise end up on the pushpit (like in my case); (c) good place for spotlight and loudhailer; (d) outboard motor davit.

You can live without all this (as I do), but if I bought a boat which had a pole on it, I certainly wouldn't take it off.

An arch on the other hand . . .

Capt JJ · 10-02-2019, 06:29

Still going thru this delemma myself..pokes are fugly, arches same IMO but panels can go atop Bimini and no windgen here either.
Radar on mast...

Wasn’t pole so much as davits I haven’t mounted, just can’t see ruining acetic s of my stern as I picked up a pramco 8’ Sailing dink complete (titled and rated for Honda 2.3) which all that fit foredeck/coachroof without impeding anchor locker on foredeck or sheets/can actually walk around it quit well too. Motor store in engine room nicely with room for 2nd rollup/8hp Yamaha 2strk...so davits prolly out?

AKA-None · 10-02-2019, 09:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Jammer, we've been lifting our 15 hp outboards with the main halyard for many years. We bring the dink alongside amidships, I shackle the lifting sling (that i made from nylon webbing) on to the halyard, we winch it up about a foot and then I walk it back to the stern and as I aim it over a mount, Ann lowers it a few inches and it sets into place. Takes a couple of minutes, uses no equipment not already in place and I can still manage it at 81. Reversing the process to mount it on the dink... which can be a bit adventurous if a big chop is running... is pretty easy as well. Lift it off the mount, walk back to where it hangs docilely, climb down into the boat and set it on the transom.

Been doing this since 1985, and haven't dropped it yet!

Jim

Sorry but I’m not picturing this. The halyard lifts up but as you walk towards the aft of the boat you are mostly holding the motor up your self with the halyard going from the motor to the top of the mast. Where is the help in that.

Kenomac · 10-02-2019, 10:45

I don’t mind the poles except when there’s a noisy windmill mounted on top.

**roverhi** · 10-02-2019, 11:58

Saw a cruiser passing through that had an outboard motor mount and outboard on it. It was one of those mounts that swing up for stowage or down for using the motor. It was a fairly large boat with an inboard so didn't need the outboard for propulsion. Asked the owner about it and he said it worked great for stowing the outboard when he took it off the dinghy. Didn't have to lift the motor farther than to transfer it from transom of the dinghy to the lowered the outboard mount and then raise the mount/motor up for making a passage. He thought the outboard might work for powering should the main engine fail but he'd never tried it. He just wanted an easy way to stow the engine.

GILow · 10-02-2019, 12:26

This whole “bad aesthetic” thing makes me laugh. To me, function is the ultimate representation of form. If it is functional, then it looks good to me.

My stern pole is actually a hefty mast section and supports the davits, 400 watts of solar, a 360 watt wind generator, two vhf antennas (one AIS) , the radar, assorted gps and television receivers and the stern light.

It provides a base for some of these devices that is at least 3 meters above the water.

Aesthetically, it just doesn’t get any better than that for me.

Edit: Oh yeah, it’s also about to be fitted with a shower head to make getting the salt off after a swim easy before walking around on deck.

**Jim Cate** · 10-02-2019, 12:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by AKA-None

Sorry but I’m not picturing this. The halyard lifts up but as you walk towards the aft of the boat you are mostly holding the motor up your self with the halyard going from the motor to the top of the mast. Where is the help in that.

Well, as I near the stern the load that I am pushing ahead of me rises to perhaps 20-25 lbs apparent. I'm just pushing at around chest height, isn't very hard to do. I'm not particularly strong these days, yet I can still do this. Obviously, the relationship between mast height and distance aft from the mast affect how hard one must push, but I suspect that it is pretty similar in most boats.

It works... for me. YMMV.

Jim

GILow · 10-02-2019, 13:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Well, as I near the stern the load that I am pushing ahead of me rises to perhaps 20-25 lbs apparent. I'm just pushing at around chest height, isn't very hard to do. I'm not particularly strong these days, yet I can still do this. Obviously, the relationship between mast height and distance aft from the mast affect how hard one must push, but I suspect that it is pretty similar in most boats.

It works... for me. YMMV.

Jim

Force required to push the outboard aft increases with distance from the base of the mast in the form of f=m.tan(a) where a is the angle made between the halyard and the mast at the top and m is the mass of the outboard. In practice this means that by the time you are the same distance aft as the height of the mast you are pushing the with the same force as you would be lifting. Of course you’d probable have wet feet too. On my boat, by the time I reached the stern I’d be pushing about 0.38 x the weight (in Newtons) of my outboard.

Of course I’d have nobody to release the halyard so I just have to use the aft deck crane instead to lower the engine straight to the dink. (Oh... hang on, another bit of aesthetically displeasing jungle gym equipment.)

Kenomac · 10-02-2019, 14:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by GILow

Force required to push the outboard aft increases with distance from the base of the mast in the form of f=m.tan(a) where a is the angle made between the halyard and the mast at the top and m is the mass of the outboard. In practice this means that by the time you are the same distance aft as the height of the mast you are pushing the with the same force as you would be lifting. Of course you’d probable have wet feet too. On my boat, by the time I reached the stern I’d be pushing about 0.38 x the weight (in Newtons) of my outboard.

Of course I’d have nobody to release the halyard so I just have to use the aft deck crane instead to lower the engine straight to the dink. (Oh... hang on, another bit of aesthetically displeasing jungle gym equipment.)

You’re forgetting that the mast height is much longer than the distance to the stern. In our case, the mast is 90ft and the distance to the stern is less than 40ft, so just like Jim.... it’s no effort at all to lift and move our 15hp Mercury around the boat using Jim’s method. We even used this halyard method to hoist a 900 pound generator into the boat last summer, and use it on a regular basis to haul 150 pound sail bags on and off the boat.