Mast height

James Eckhardt

New Member
I posted about my new boat a while back: http://sailingforums.com/threads/star-dancer.29497/ and I'm just getting back to working on it after a long winter. It had been noted that the mast of my boat was nine feet while the mast of a sunfish was ten feet. Sometime this winter I went to look at the mast, and it looks as if the bottom foot of the mast has been cut off. Being a pretty poor college student I'm trying to repair my boat on a fairly limited budget, and I didn't plan for a new mast. Though I hope to get one sometime in the future, I might not be able to this season. Does anyone have any clue how a mast being a foot short would affect sailing? I'm betting no one else has experience with this, but it would be good to hear your thoughts.
 
It'll be fine. It is actually pretty common that people do this. Masts tend to snap if used a lot in salt water, and a lot of people just put the mast cap on the bottom of what is left and carry on! If you read about the Jens depowering rig, having a short mast just means you will sail with the equivalent of that every time. Enjoy!
 
Sometime this winter I went to look at the mast, and it looks as if the bottom foot of the mast has been cut off. Being a pretty poor college student I'm trying to repair my boat on a fairly limited budget, and I didn't plan for a new mast. Though I hope to get one sometime in the future, I might not be able to this season. Does anyone have any clue how a mast being a foot short would affect sailing? I'm betting no one else has experience with this, but it would be good to hear your thoughts.

I'm with Beldar; you'll be fine. And maybe even better off. This observation is common enough around here that it comes up about once a year. Let me ask a personal question: what is your weight?

A number of years ago I sat in on a clinic given by a popular world champion who suggested that the lighter sailors in the audience might want to keep an eye out for these broken 'discards' and do just as you are thinking, smoothing and capping the end and use the short mast as a sort of everyday jens rig. He pointed out that in heavy air they would have the built-in benefits of a simple and sturdy jens, while in light air they still would not be disadvantaged in that since that there would not really be. that much wind spillage anyway.

One of the beauties of Sunfish-type lateen rigs, generally, is that they sort of self-reef automatically because the upper spar is bit bendy and will flex to spill wind. In light air the spar remains straight and as wind increases the section of spar that is above the mast top tie-off flexes and spills some of the air. If you have a short mast (or rig a jens) it means that more of the spar is above the mast top tie-off point and therefore as the wind builds, more wind spills off. Boats with stayed masts and booms don't have this dynamic, which is why they instead depower in heavy instead by reefing their sails.

One top womens champion mentioned in an interview article that she almost always races with a jens, for the reason mentioned above - that in light air the spar wasn't bending anyway, and she would already be set up ideally if the wind built up any while she was out. The point being that she saw little downside and plenty of upside to having a set-up like you are going to have with your short mast. She also happens to be literally half my own beer-bloated weight, and the reason I asked yours was that the closer you are to her size than mine, the better your short mast will be for everyday use.
 

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