S bend in mast

[Steve Laume]

I just finished helping an old buddy of mine bring back a new boat from Maine to CT. He has very little sailing experience and didn't necessarily know what to look for as for how fit the boat would be to make the trip. He did have it surveyed before the purchase but the surveyor seemed to have missed some things. My buddy is a great guy and I have known him for a very long time but I also wanted to be sure the boat would be okay to safely make the trip. One of the things I brought along was my Loos gauge to check the rigging tension and turn the rig if necessary. When I sighted the mast it had a pretty defined athwart ship bend in it, below the spreaders. When I put the gauge on it all the wires were between 4 and 5 percent of breaking strength. We went to work tensioning things up and could not get rid of the bend. So I am wondering if the spar is bent and it cannot be taken out with the wires or if I was doing something wrong. Once we got things tight the bend was basically the same as when everything was loose.

It was a good trip despite a few annoying details. We ate some really great grilled fish. Some we bought and the rest we caught. Tuna, swordfish, mahi, striped bass and blue fish. We also managed to polish off 6 lobsters between us during our stay at Ragged Island. My buddy went to heroic efforts to trouble shoot the auto pilot but to no avail. We had to hand steer the entire time. This included the 28 hour crossing from Maine to Provincetown. Toss into this the fact that there was heavy over cast skies and no compass light. Thank the lord for the glow of Boston as a guiding light to steer by. We waited out the 30 knot winds and 11 foot seas with rain after midnight which would not have made hand steering much fun. As if it ever is. This was rewarded with a following breeze of 5 knots or less so it was a long motor boat ride. Just drivin the bus on home.

Still any time on a boat and a chance to visit and show so favorite spots to a good friend made for a good time.

But how will he get rid of that pesky bend in the mast? I am kind of thinking it is damaged and will need to be straightened or replaced, Steve.

[Jim Walsh]

I have no intention of besmirching all surveyors but whomever surveyed this sailboat and failed to notice a distinct athwartships "S" curve in the mast should have his Topsiders and his dead-blow mallet confiscated.
I'm confident that if it was merely a poorly tuned rig introducing a bend you'd have cured that problem in short order. It'll be interesting to see the condition of the mast once the rig is pulled for the winter.
Perhaps the surveyor should be invited to witness the rig being pulled so the yard crew can't be held responsible for the apparent damage which was missed during the survey

[Frenchy]

I think the mast can be straightened and restored to functionality. A search for "Straightening a bent mast" yielded
several blogs and methods. Your friend should do this slowly, carefully and try not to overbend the mast
in the other direction. If he doesn't feel confident about this, perhaps the yard has experience.
As for surveyors, yes, in my experience even the best miss things. The surveyor who did my boat came highlly
recommended and was accredited. He did an excellent job. But he couldn't and didn't see everything. - Jean

[Steve Laume]

So, do you think the mast is bent? That was my conclusion but I didn't want to trouble my friend with this news as he was so happy about his new boat and there wasn't much we could do about it. At first he thought he might stay in the water this winter. After we talked about a few issues over the course of our trip, he will be hauling out and then he can sight the mast while it is laying on the horses. He should also be replacing his rigging wire as it is old and a couple of terminals were also bent. Ya gotta wonder who was handling that rig to get it to bend. I don't think this is something that would happen while sailing.

When we were on board, I was thinking he might have to replace the mast to make it right. When I got home I Goggled S bends and didn't find much information on how to take it out with tuning. Every article did say it was a bad thing to have. The bend is in a long arch with no kinks so it seems like it could be straightened. There was a great video from Wooden Boat that had a guy doing it with saddles to protect the mast and a hydraulic jack on a strong back.

When I bent Raven's boom, I never even considered straightening it. The bend was pretty sharp around one of the main sheet bails so it might not have been a good candidate. A new boom section was not a tremendous amount of money and I drove a 5' section of the old boom inside of it so something else is more likely to break before I ever bend it again. Switching all the hardware over was a lot more time consuming than I expected but then, isn't everything when it comes to working on a boat, Steve.