Doing a rewire on the masts and wondering what the general consensus is on best method to eliminate wire slap inside the mast. Mine looked to have originally had sponges tied on at intervals but they had long since disintegrated. I’ve been told swimming pool noodles would last? Or heavy duty zip tie “spiders” at 2 ft intervals.
Please let me know what has worked well for you. And while we’re on the subject of things that go bang bang…
What is the best method for preventing external halyards from slapping the mast in the absence of spreaders…Cheers
The answer is zip tie “spiders.” If you search my posts you’ll find a picture of them installed on my wiring when I replaced everything in my mast.
I would concur. I needed to replace all my mast wiring when a rodent wintered over in my mast and chewed through all of them. Haven’t had any slapping noises in the new wiring (the OEM foam they used had mostly disintegrated regardless)…
I use soft pipe insulation which comes in long rolls. I’ve replaced it 2-3 times over 23 years. You end up with a very dull thud when the boat rolls, but nothing objectionable, and we sleep in the v-berth.
As far as halyard slap is concerned, I tie my jib halyards off to the bow pulpit stainless and main halyard to the end of the boom.
– Geoff
We have pretty bad wire slapping when it’s rolly at anchor. My understanding is that zip ties and foam disintegrate rather quickly, in a few years at most. I’ve heard of a more permanent solution where pins were put through a smaller section of the mast at certain intervals to keep the wiring pinned to one side of the mast. But it strikes me as probably unsuitable for the round mast of the Freedom (40/40) and possibly compromising the integrity of a flexible CF mast. Thoughts?
The foam disintegrates for sure, but zip ties do not. I used very heavy duty ones, and they’ve been doing their job for years.
I wouldn’t drill any more holes in my mast than I absolutely have to.
I did both pipe insulation AND BAZs (big ass zips)
works great for wiring and seems to quiet the halyards too.
[quote=RadioZephyr post_id=53951 time=1632332273 user_id=5979]
The foam disintegrates for sure, but zip ties do not. I used very heavy duty ones, and they’ve been doing their job for years.
I wouldn’t drill any more holes in my mast than I absolutely have to.
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I agree with this, esp the drilling part. When I removed the original foam, almost 30 years old at the time, it was in remarkably good shape, but it definitely does wear and leaves piles of dust at the heel of the mast to boot.
I decided to replace the foam when I added the zips because I wanted the wiring to have a little protection from any halyard chafe, etc. Probably overkill to be sure.
I also used those industrial size zips. Everyone should have a few of those aboard BTW, they come in handy sometimes. But I did cut them down a bit so I did not wind up with a foot and a half extra tail on them. I was afraid those long tails might get cattywampus with halyards/sheaves and such. So now the length are such that they press up against the interior of the mast but don"t have a lot of extra plastic flopping around in there. Probably could achieve the same thing if I had purchased shorter ties. Lesson learned.