Mast Flex on a 42' wooden schooner?

[Bobby Craigue]

I'm helping rig a 42' wooden schooner, when I was at the top of the 50' hollow wooden mast there was about 12" of flex, I'm 195 lbs, we did not have the fore and aft rigging in place. Is that normal? This is my first time to work with a wooden boat.
Where can I find info on wooden mast and flex/strength?
Thank you!

[Lurvio]

Wood tends to flex, to me 12 inches at that lenght sounds quite normal.
A living tree flexes a lot more in the wind.

[LyndonJ]

It's loaded as a column so the moment of inertia is calculated normally and then you do a euler secant or similar analysis.

the deflection sounds about right to me and wooden masts usualy taper or use thinner walls for the top section.