Anonymous wrote:

Hi,

During my project of converting a Maxi 77 to junk rig, I consider building the mast head and also the mast collar from GRP.

The design of the masthead would be like in the sketch attached. The blue lines indicate the grp layer direction. For my 35m² sail I gues I aim at 5mm grp wall thickness, so roughly 12-15 layers of 450g/m² fabric, epoxy laminated.

Advantage of the eyebolts: one could fasten a plate onto the protruding bolt ends, which could be used as an equipment carrier for antennas, lightning rods, windex, whatsoevever... without the need to drill leaking holes into the masthead itself.

Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

The mast collar could be made similar, but upside down.

Cheers,

Paul

When I converted my Kingfisher 26 Antares, a redundant carbon fibre spinnaker pole, part of the UK's campaign to compete for the America's Cup, became my mast. I formed 4 inverted triangles of epoxy and glassfibre reinforced with Kevlar at 90° intervals around the masthead. These supported a ring of 8mm stainless steel rod surrounding the masthead, on which lifts and halyards were hung. I believe it's worked well since it was done in 2011.