Article Lon Zimmerman • Illustrations Rick Myers
Carrying your sailboat around is your trailer’s main job, but there’s one more thing it can help you with—raising the mast.
My friends Pam and Dana have a Montgomery 17. They were not able to lift the mast easily by themselves, so we sketched up a design for the welder. The result is illustrated at right. Now they use this “easy mast lift system” regularly. In fact I made a similar system for my Compac 19 and trailer.
I bought an eight-foot length of aluminum two-inch-square tubing and took it to the welding shop. The shop found a piece of steel tubing six feet long, that just slid over the aluminum tubing. They welded a steel plate to the bottom of the outside for attaching it to the trailer tongue with galvanized bolts. (Steel could be used for both tubes, but aluminum is much lighter, so easier to lift.) I drilled a hole through both the aluminum and steel tubing so that the aluminum inner tube could be lifted and pinned in place with a 3.5" bolt. A halyard, cleated at one end on the mast, is led forward over the roller on top of the aluminum tube, then down to the attached winch on the steel tubing below. Crank to begin raising mast.
*As with any mast-raising system, beware of overhead power lines or obstructions and consider whether any side-to-side support will be required to steady mast.
The roller will also support the mast when trailering, with the tube in the lowered position.
This simple mast-raising system works very well for my Compac 19, raising and lowering the mast with ease. •SCA•
First appeared in issue #118
The set up looks easy to build but I have one issue.
I have an older ComPac 16 and the biggest problem I have is actually getting the mast lined up and the bolt on at the mast step. Once I have the bolt thru I can easily walk the mast up into place, however, getting the mast lined up to put the bolt thru is tough for a 78 y/o geezer. Any recommendations.
I reached out to ComPac asking about any way I could modify my mast step to make it a tabernacle mast but they never responded. Has anyone modified a ComPac 16 mast into a tabernacle mast?
Ed Pajon
erpajon@ gmail.com
With two lines and a spare block, an unsophisticated option for leverage on your mast is to roll down your car windows and tie a bowline containing the roof of your car and a spare block. Some quick-release hitch at the top of the mast runs through the block on your bowline back to your hand as you walk the mast up. The line in your hand gets cleated off on your boat while you fasten stays.