I posted earlier about visible wear or damage around the top of my mast step (1973 Minifish), and the suggestion was to fill the gouges with thickened epoxy. That was the only potential problem I could see at that time. Since then I bought a fiber-optic endoscope ($35 on Amazon), and got a better look at the bottom, and have two new questions.
(a) Why is there a hole at the bottom of the mast step at all? I asked this question on Facebook and got a lot of pictures showing that this hole is always there, but no convincing explanation of why. One person thought that maybe it forces the weight of the mast to rest on the rim not the bottom, to remove stress from the lower mast cap, but that sounded dubious to me, since the base cap is cheap and easy to replace anyway. My own tentative theory is that maybe it is an artifact of the construction process, and serves no useful function at all. Like maybe they blow foam in through it, and the little cavity under the hole is where the nozzle spraying in the foam was poking down through the hole. If that is right, then it seems like I might as well go ahead and fill it in, maybe with this same thickened epoxy stuff.
(b) Anyway, that hole has gotten much larger and more raggedy looking on my boat than when it comes from the factory, as shown in some of those other pictures. So should I fill it in now, either with this thickened epoxy, or something else? It seems like I could do this pretty easily, since by coincidence I even have a foot-long cut-off piece of Sunfish mast, complete with base cap, that I could use to press down and shape the filler to give the whole mast step bottom the proper shape. So, should I do this?
my mast step bottom:
#1
#2:
#3
(a) Why is there a hole at the bottom of the mast step at all? I asked this question on Facebook and got a lot of pictures showing that this hole is always there, but no convincing explanation of why. One person thought that maybe it forces the weight of the mast to rest on the rim not the bottom, to remove stress from the lower mast cap, but that sounded dubious to me, since the base cap is cheap and easy to replace anyway. My own tentative theory is that maybe it is an artifact of the construction process, and serves no useful function at all. Like maybe they blow foam in through it, and the little cavity under the hole is where the nozzle spraying in the foam was poking down through the hole. If that is right, then it seems like I might as well go ahead and fill it in, maybe with this same thickened epoxy stuff.
(b) Anyway, that hole has gotten much larger and more raggedy looking on my boat than when it comes from the factory, as shown in some of those other pictures. So should I fill it in now, either with this thickened epoxy, or something else? It seems like I could do this pretty easily, since by coincidence I even have a foot-long cut-off piece of Sunfish mast, complete with base cap, that I could use to press down and shape the filler to give the whole mast step bottom the proper shape. So, should I do this?
my mast step bottom:
#1
#2:
#3