CF Mast Selection

Hi,

I've got a home-built Scarab 22 tri, a Ray Kendrick design. It has a rotating alum mast from a J24, cut down to 30'. I'm looking to replace it with a CF wing mast and am seeking advice on how to determine the height and profile needed. I'd like to increase the height to as much as 33' and carry more sail, however, want to be careful not to overpower the boat. Suggestions on how to run the calculations would be much appreciated.

-vtsailor
praying for spring!

 

Welcome to the forum.

You'll need to contact a designer or NA, familiar with CF spars, if you expect reasonable cost and performance. You might be able to self design it, but (and it's a huge butt, much like my other half's) getting one shaped as you need, with not too little or too much fiber, to tolerate the deeds you'll ask of it, is a different animal. Breaking one, because you missed something or having it be way too heavy, because you over estimated laminate schedules, are difficult decisions to live with usually.

 

Eric Sponberg has provided most if not all the useful cf mast advice and lamination schedule info I have seen on this board. You can search the posts and or engage him directly. Whatever you pay him (or an equal) will be reflected in the value when you sell.

 

Etamax (etamax.com.au) can engineer and build your mast. Let me know the boat weight, width and sail plan and i will get you a quote for both. Alternatively, I can sell you plans and materials to build it. If you built your boat, you will have no trouble building your mast, but unless you really know what you are doing, I doubt that self engineering it will result in a minimum weight mast.

rob

 

Skyak and Rob, thanks to both for the info. I didn't build the boat; my skills are in electronics, not fabrication. I'll dig up the sail plan and grab the necessary data to get quotes.

 

Vt is you boat the one on the building blog on team scarab?

http://www.voile.org/trimaran/