PJPiercey

Pat, Thanks for the post about your masts. I think I will go with aluminum for the masts on the boat I'm now building. The boat I'm building is about 17ft and has a hull weight of about 275lbs. (You can click on my www at the bottom of this message and see my project.) Since I'm in the Seattle area, have access to material, and have a good friend that does aluminum fabrication, the aluminum masts sound like the way to go. The main mast is 21ft with a sail area of 72sqft, the mizzen is 19ft with a sail area of 45sqft. Pretty close I think to the Core Sound 17. I was thinking of using 8ft of 3" dia, 8ft of 2.5" dia, and the remainder 2" dia. For the wall thickness I was thinking .065". Does this sound ok? Does the aluminum need to be reinforced where the mast goes through the thwart? Thanks for you input! Paul Piercey

Pat, Sorry, I wasn't logged in. My www should be at the bottom of this post. :oops: Paul

I used clear Doug Fir for a mast that I built with the birdsmouth method and it turned out great. I read some of the older messages regarding mast construction for the Core Sounds and it seemed like the stiffer masts gave better performance. I think I will use Doug Fir again for the boat i'm building now since it will make a stiff spar, is cheaper than Sitka Spruce, and is easily obtained here in the Northwest.