Wire slapping in mast...

[tanton37]

Looking for general consensus for preventing wire slap in mast. Swimming pool noodles?
Zip tie "spiders" at 2 ft. intervals? Please share what has worked well for you.

[tkeithlu]

In the mast? I'm thinking that you mean outside the mast. A bungy cord to a shroud does the job.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by tanton37

Looking for general consensus for preventing wire slap in mast. Swimming pool noodles?
Zip tie "spiders" at 2 ft. intervals? Please share what has worked well for you.

Indeed.
See ➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...tml#post267985

[Sailmonkey]

I tried the pool noodle and zip tie spider approach. What we got was an annoying shuffle and squeak instead of a slap.

My second try was a piece of line with all the wires zip tied to it. The line was anchored at the mast head then I riveted a padeye inside the mast base to anchor the other end of the line. Pull the line really tight and pool noodle the wires, you won’t hear them again.

[JBP]

Zip ties. Old pool noodles can be quite difficult to get out and interfere if you ever need to fish a new line. I put all the masthead wires in split loom and then put zip tie spiders on that. That way I can pull new wires if I need to.

[Hudson Force]

I used the spaced zip ties when adding a new cable and I was pleased that this reduced the slap of previous cables without the ties.

[olivert]

I used to work for a mast maker. What we always did building a mast was to pass down the mast a length of plastic water pipe, diameter according to what cables were to go in.



Stops all that noise and more important is when you have slapping wires, sooner or later the wire will break down and cause all sorts of problems

[Mike OReilly]

I've tried the pool noodle approach and the spidered zip ties. Ties worked better for me.

I had a previous boat where a previous owner tried using styrofoam packing material (those little foam nuggets). Didn't work very well and was a terrible mess; the stuff seemed to degrade over time.

[jmschmidt]

My boat does not have internal halyards. The last time I had the mast removed (over 10 years ago) I tried heavy duty zip-ties every 3 feet on the wire bundle. Worked great until this year when some slapping started. Maybe some of the ties got brittle from the heat and broke. The boat is in Hawaii and the mast is black. Even so I got my time and money's worth out of this technique.

[Greatest Lakes]

My halyards are wire and rope, leading the halyard to a hard point just 2-3 inches off the mast and tying them off with enough tension seems to solve 95% of the noise. Boat we had with all wire halyards was similarly quiet when treated the same. Only sound I've not solved is furling main mast howling in some wind directions. I do know a guy who had a very raked mast who used thin wall pvc pipe to quiet his.

[Mike OReilly]

I should have clarified; it's not my halyards that make a noise. It's my mast wiring. All my halyards are external, so I can silence them using a few strategies. But my internal wiring was a problem. So when I ran new cable for a radar I used the spider zip-tie strategy and this seemed to quiet everything inside.

[NorthCoastJoe]

I have a wire slap problem in my Pearson 30, drives me nuts on a rolly night.
When I do get a chance to work on it I plan on running an aluminum or PVC conduit inside the mast for the cables, secured to the mast every several feet.