Rewiring CD 30 mast

[Bob Lincoln]

I'm in the process of rewiring my mast and am in need of some help.
Where can I get the 4 wire sheathed cable for the mast head?
If not available I'll use 2 2-wire cables.
Any suggestions on purchasing new connectors?
Also the deck light fixture 2/3 of the way up the mast is alum. and connected w/ SS mach screw. It doesn't want to budge??

Thanks for the help.
Bob

[CruiseAlong]

Mast Cable
http://shop.genuinedealz.com/Items/Item ... %2050%20FT

Connectors:
Cole Hersee M-115BP 4 pole plug and socket

[Wingaersheek II]

I rewired the mast on my 1982 CD27 last year and had difficulty removing the aluminum fixture on mast. I gave the screw a daily dose of "AeroKroil" after the third (or fourth?) day it finally let loose. Probably the first time it had been off since new.

Ancor (Marinco) makes four conductor wire if that's your requirement.

[Carl Thunberg]

The biggest challenge for me when I re-wired the mast on my former CD30 was getting the foam plugs out. Maybe your mast doesn't have them, or maybe you haven't gotten to that part yet. For me, this was a major PITA. Finding the wire was the easy part.

[Maine_Buzzard]

We cleaned the foam out of a Grampian by taking 10' sections of copper tubing and soldering them together as we went along. Had a bar on the top that would hold the tube off the bottom of the mast and made a cut in the end of the tube to eat pieces of the foam away as we turned it over. Miserable to take 4 sections out, each about six inches long.

Replumbed the basement feeds afterwards.

[Bob Lincoln]

Thank you all for the helpful comments.
When running the copper tubing to remove the foam do you
recall how many different locations there were? I can see I have the same thing.
Bob

[Maine_Buzzard]

about every 8 feet, the foam had been sprayed in to keep the wires from slapping- No internal halyards on this mast.

We took the foot off and then tapped for bolts to reassemble.


Lots of swearing.

[Steve Laume]

I rewired Raven's mast last winter. I didn't have to remove any foam as there was none. I had a coaxial cable slapping around in there but no mast head lights only the deck/steaming combo.

As for the connections at the deck level I use the Blue Sea clams to penetrate the deck and then a terminal block mounted inside the boat under the mast base inspection plate. This eliminates any connections being exposed to weather.

For the fixture, lots of penetrating oil and rap on your screwdriver with a hammer while applying pressure. The worst case would be the need to grind them off and retap but you should be able to get them to move.

If you look closely at your mast extrusion you will find a small track on the inside. There are miniature slides that fit into this track and you can fasten your wiring to it and pull them up the mast. It was not an easy job.

What I did was to fasten a wire to the slides and then tape and wire tie all of my electrical wiring to that with wire ties. I ran a 3 wire mast head along with the vhf and then the radar and deck/steaming wire to the spreaders. Once you manage to get everything into place the support wire can be tied off to the bar that appears to be molded into the masthead fitting for this purpose. This takes all the weight off of the wires and the slides merely keep the mess from slapping around in there. No foam or long tails on your wire ties are needed. I believe I did leave the tails long and they certainly made the job more difficult.

No matter how you secure the wires within the mast make sure to pull a messenger down through when you remove the old wiring.

This turned out to be a slightly bigger job than I had expected but it is nice to have new wire and no slapping, Steve.