'Katzenjammer' - what a wonderful word!

Before I bent on my sail, I took all the bits of string out to the guard rails because they were driving me dotty.  Now I can hear a little tap, tap when the wind is from astern which I believe is the mast lift wobbling its shackle.  That is only a recent phenomenon - I slackened the lift to try something and haven't hoisted the sail since, so couldn't get it quite as tight as I wanted when I re-tied it.  Generally, I think you can set up most of the lines so that they don't flap, but the fall of the halliard certainly needs to be dealt with.

Most freedom's unstayed (carbon fiber) masts will oscillate at some wind speed.  Twenty knots sounds about right to me.  If the wind builds further, it also seems to stop.  On Flutterby, it is more a matter of shaking the whole boat a bit than of making noise.

I really wouldn't think that any sort of wind indicator would rattle the whole mast that much, but I've not seen yours.

Good luck!
Barry

Thanks for all your comments.  I did try tensioning the main halyard, cranking it up on the winch but it didn't seem to make much difference.  I can live with the vibration but will be delighted if I can stop or reduce the noise.  I don't have any cables inside my mast so the noise is either the shackles rattling in the mast cap lugs or more likely the wind direction indicator, which I intend to remove as soon as I can get a friend to haul me up the mast. There is no vibration below 20 knots, it seems to happen when the wind suddenly gusts to 25 - 30.  Perhaps it will only happen in that particular wind range as per David's experience.  I guess I can learn to live with it.  I once lived next to a railway line where goods trains screeched down the hill in the early hours of the morning and I got used to that.  It was always amusing to see the reaction of overnight guests!  I suspect that when my sail finally arrives and I hoist it for the first time I won't give a damn!  Everything is ready to go now, as soon as the sail comes I can bend it on and sail off.  That may be a few weeks away yet as my sailmaker friend is working on it slowly between paid projects and I am trying to be as patient as possible.

Graham,
My masts vibrate a little at anchor, but only at a certain windspeed. The mizzen makes more noise, because there's a loose cable inside it, but it's well away from my bed. I think that your problem is made worse by a) sleeping next to the mast b) having a steel boat and c) not yet having the sail bundle in place, which will tend to bend the mast aft a bit. You can't alter a) and b), but could mimic c) by taking the halyard back to the sheeting points and tensioning it, until the new sail arrives. That might help.
I find a 10mm foam camping mat taped around a mast to be a good insulator.

A very Wise Owl once wrote that she did not like aluminium masts because they were noisy and cold.  At the time I first read these words, I had a deck-stepped mast so wasn't worried about how cold it was, and it was the quietest rig I have ever had, with internal halyards, t-ball terminals and streamlined spreaders.  I smugly said to myself, oh well, everybody has their prejudices.  Woe is me!  Now that my mast comes down in the middle of what used to be my double bunk, I am going to have to give it a little lace-on warmer, like those spoiled pooches wear on cold days.  Much more serious, I have discovered that my mast is extremely noisy (at anchor) when the wind goes over 25 knots.  It visibly vibrates about halfway from partners to truck and the vibration goes right through the steel hull as tends to happen with this hull construction.  Worse still it makes an infernal racket.  I am not sure if the racket is caused by the halyard and lift shackles rattling in their lugs or whether it is my somewhat agricultural wind indicator rattling.  If the latter, I can solve the problem by removing it, just leaving the vertical bolt to protect the masthead from shitting shags.  I have tried leaving the mast lines slack and also tightening them as much as possible without much variation.  There is also a bit of slap from the halyards and mast lift that I cannot seem to stop regardless of how far out I tie the preventers.  Is this vibration a a normal characteristic of unstayed masts?  Does anyone have any suggestions?  I find myself alternately nostalgic for my old rig and wishing I had followed my heart and built the mast and spars from timber.  I have little doubt about the strength of the spar for sailing, it is 200mm in dia. at the base, 110mm at the truck with a constant wall thickness of 5mm but this vibration has me foxed.  I have never read anything about this issue that I can remember.