I am pretty sure I have a tabernacle hinged mast setup on my Freedom 21, though I’ve never actually tried taking it down yet. I am finally getting to that point as I disassembled the whole rig so I could repaint my boom this week.
With the boom off and nothing weighing the mast down I noticed something concerning: the mast is shifting when the boat moves. It seems to have roughly 6-8" of play at the top of the mast when the weight moves from side to side, and I can feel the ‘thunk’ of it shifting.
I can tell this movement is at the joint at the deck because it’s not moving below decks. It’s definitely not shifting at the mast step.
Has anyone experienced this before? Any ideas for fixing it? I feel like a wedge between the mast and the tabernacle step might work, but it also might make the mast impossible to unstep. I doubt I could lay epoxy precisely enough to thicken the inside of the mast.
Maybe I should just ignore it - it doesn’t seem to be a major issue while sailing since the mast is always loaded and unable to shift (except when heading downwind in a large swell - I’ve felt it shifting before but didn’t know what I was feeling). My biggest concern is the extra wear & chafing on the inside of the mast.
Hi Ian, that is not something I would want to ignore, any movement is going to create wear and more stress from the impact of the thunks you are hearing. I do not have a tabernacle mast but I think the tabernacle is just a reinforced hinge above the deck, so at deck level it should be the same as my mast. When I step/unstep my mast, which I did yesterday actually I have a circular plastic wedge that gets hammered into the deck stopping any slop in that joint and helping hold the mast down. But maybe I misunderstood, is it the mast deck joint or the joint in the tabernacle itself?
The deck is about flush with the seam created by the tabernacle joint, making it sort of like a ‘deck-stepped’ mast while still going down to the hull.
From that first drawing it looks like there’s supposed to be a 1/4" aluminum sleeve inside the top section of the mast to make it fit right. I wonder if I might be missing that part…
Ian, there is a salient thread here, in which someone professes to have better full size pdfs of the same plans. It’s 3 or so years old but you might be able to get them still. It is here, scroll down to the images and read.
It does seem like the tabernacle is the issue… best of luck with that. But I’m not sure why anyone would retrofit a tabernacle, as it is not difficult to step and unstep the mast. I have done it by myself but it is easier with 2 or even 3 people.
My guess is this one is original, not retrofitted, though I have no way of knowing. The real issue I think is that the mast is sleeved with aluminum at the gooseneck due to the previous owner breaking it in an uncontrolled gybe. The sleeve seems pretty heavy, which I guess contributes to this issue. It also means the mast is too heavy for me to just lift, so I’m going to have to build some sort of lifting rig. My projects are spawning projects!
If you like I can measure up my rig, it is made from aluminium right angle section about 2"x2" and about 3/16 thick, which is plenty strong enough. Or you could use 2"x4" framing wood. I need to raise the mast to the very top of my frame with the strop just below the balance point to get the base over the coach roof and onto the pushpit. Would you need to take the base section out? If not you wouldn’t need something so high.
Pretty sure I only need to lift about 8" or so to get past the deck step. I might just try using the sailing center’s hoist this Monday. Thanks for the offer though!
Got the mast down yesterday! I was able to do it by myself with the sailing center’s hoist but I wouldn’t do that again. Definitely need someone to catch it. Thankfully it is in fact a tabernacle hinge:
In three years this is the first time I’ve seen the top of my mast. Feels like milestone
The downside is I didn’t figure out the swaying, but I probably am just going to let this go considering it’s been fine so far. I don’t really have any creative ideas for fixing this while maintaining the ability to unstep the mast.
I also found out my spinnaker block is frozen, so the mast will be coming down again soon. The ‘hat’ at the top needs to be replaced as well - anyone know what part that is? I think I might end up having to 3D print something for that.
I think I might have mentioned this to you, but Paul Dennis has a mast from that red F21 that he scrapped. Getting the mast to you would be tricky, but he would probably ship you the masthead piece. I’m not sure if it’s the same design as the mastheads on the bigger Freedoms, but if it is, there ain’t no way a 3D printed one would work unless you’re printing in metal.
Oh yeah, he actually sent me a rudder when I broke mine (which ended up not working for the shoal draft and I had to send it back). I’ll ask him - reusing a cap would be easier than printing it. I wouldn’t mind replacing the whole mast and saving the weight (the sleeve on my mast is insanely heavy) but it would probably cost way more to ship than I want to pay for this project.
Printing should work though as a plan B; the cap on the 21 is just a piece of plastic like a pipe cap. It has no purpose beyond stopping rain from getting inside the mast. The main halyard goes through an exit block below the cap.
