Lifting a mast!

[bad1129]

I need to lift the mast of my Catalina 270 off the deck step to check the connections. Does anyone have any nifty tricks I can use to raise it 6 to 8 inches without renting a crane?


TIA?

[flyingfin]

Grab a couple of friends, some lines, gloves and step it your self

[Benz]

Build a sheer-legs out of some 2x12s; essentially an A-frame that straddles the cabin. Guy it down fore-and aft, put a tackle at the apex, and haul away.

[tkeithlu]

I'm completely with Flyingfish and Benz, but perhaps a little amplification is in order.

The trick here is to lift the mast without it having the opportunity to topple, which would rip your deck out as well as damage the mast. Your lifting point with a shear legs or a shear tripod (which I recommend) is going to be more than half way down the mast, so as you lift it it will be unstable, tending to fall over. You don't want to end up as a YouTube boat fails of the week.

In addition, you will have to release the stays/shrouds in order to lift it, and they are what is keeping it from toppling as we speak. So, you need to rig safety lines, roughly in the place of the stays/shrouds to do the job while the mast is lifted. You may be able to suitably extend the wires, or you may want to run new rope from the masthead to anchors below. Whichever, leave them only a little bit slack as you start up.

The same goes for the bottom of the mast. Box it in so it can't swing across the cabin and take out the pantry as it takes out the deck above.

A come-along or a small winch will give you better control than a group of friends yelling at each other.

Carefully keep your mast under control, move slowly, and good luck with it. This is a situation in which your mast is just waiting for the opportunity to live up to my tag line.

[Pete7]

How heavy do you think your mast is. My boat is only a little longer but I can't lift one end of the mast when its on trestles.

Is there a local boatyard that could lift it and let it hang over lunchtime whilst you check it and then put it back?

Pete

[sanibel sailor]

Deck stepped? If so, it might be easiest and safest to lower and re-raise it rather than trying to keep it vertical with nothing stabilizing the butt end..

[James M B]

We have raised/lowered a few masts by putting the boat between two equal or bigger boats and using both their halyards.

[C420sailor]

Can’t really provide much guidance, but in response to the above, my dad and I lift our B361 mast off the spar rack, onto horses, and back up.

I’d say it is probably 300lbs, tops.

That said, that’s a tremendous amount of torque due to the long arm. I’d personally pay for a crane. If something goes wrong and your deck gets destroyed, the boat is likely totaled (and insurance will NOT cover)

[Celestialsailor]

I helped an Orion27 get their mast off by tying our b oats hard and secure to the docks, bow to bow. Then used my jib halyard to lift.

[TrentePieds]

What connections is it you need to check? If they are the electrical ones, surely there should be easier ways of doing that than lifting the mast??

If you DO have to lift the mast, careful thought bout the physics involved will see you right. Sheer legs is the time honoured way of dealing with that task, but sheer legs have to be carefully secured to the hull of the boat lest serious problems should ensue. They also need to be raked a bit off vertical.

On your boat the only convenient anchoring point for the heels of the sheer legs that I can see would be the BASES of the first set of stanchions aft of the pulpit. To lash the heels of the sheer legs to the base of the stanchions would be easy enuff if you know you marlinspike seamanship. The apex of the sheer legs can be formed from plywood bolted to the sheer legs in such a manner that a fork is formed that will grasp the mast right under the crosstrees.

Because the crosstrees are more than halfway up the mast, the mast, when unstayed, should quite safely hang vertically from the fork. HOWEVER! This will ONLY work if the cross trees are more than halfway along the mast extrusion, i.e. if the centre of gravity of the mast is BELOW the crosstrees.

If you can now tilt the sheer legs forward, the physics of the case will cause the heel of the mast to lift out of the mast step fitted to the deck. Manipulating the sheer legs could be done by means of a winch (the sort of winch used on boat trailers) fitted on the pulpit.

Obviously you will have to slack off all the mast stays, but if the mast is slung ABOVE its centre of gravity, that will be perfectly okay. But you do need to be absolutely sure of your measurements BEFORE you rig to try this :-)!

I would not even start doing this unless I had made an accurately scaled and dimensioned drawing of the set-up.

All the best

TrentePieds