Association Forum - Do we need an A Frame ?

Assn Members Area · Join

Home.

Association Forum

Ships Store

Cruising

Racing

Technical Tips

Photo Gallery - New

Boat Search - Updated

Manuals & Brochures

Swap Meet

Links

Officer Flag Line & Staff

Bylaws & Constitution

Members Area

Join the Association

Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.

Association Forum

Username:	Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?

All Forums

Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

Catalina 250 Specific Forum

Do we need an A Frame ?

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Author

Topic

Page: of 2

Keith D.
Navigator

Members Avatar

USA
233 Posts

Response Posted - 01/26/2007 : 20:02:57

This is an old post, which is in the archives, but the pictures have been left out, so I will repost it. I have used this to take the mast down on the water a couple of times.

In 1997 Catalina went from the onboard gin pole to the trailer based system. This produced a problem for those who don’t have a trailer or have their boats on the water all of the time. There is an advantage in the gin pole over the “A” frame is there is a lot less to stow away. Arlyn’s version could be only a single 5’ pole and the baby stays. There is two ways to go about setting up a gin pole on the newer 250’s. The first is to modify the mast, as Catalina did it on the original boats. All you would need to do is to drill a 3/4” hole in the front of the mast

and then add the standoff inside the mast.

Catalina originally made these out of wood but mine fell apart on it’s second use and I went to aluminum one.

It would only take a few minutes to modify the mast so you could use the original Catalina gin pole. And it could be done with the mast up. The second method would be to modify a standard pole and strap an attachment point to the mast. With this method you don’t have to modify the mast. What I came up with was to take a piece of 16 gauge sheet metal, bend it into a u shape the size of the mast and weld a piece of 1” pipe to it. This I strapped to the mast with some hose clamps and added some thick rubber under it to keep from scratching the mast. I then took the two screws out of the original Catalina gin pole adapter (seen to the right of the mast) and used them to mount the pole to the new assembly.

Since there is a possibility that this may rotate around the mast if you don’t tighten down enough on the hose clamps I also added two baby stays to the gin pole which I tied off at the same points as the baby stays for the mast.

Testing this assembly showed it took the mast up and down as easy as the original Catalina system.

Edited by - on

britinusa
Web Editor

Members Avatar

USA
5404 Posts

Response Posted - 01/26/2007 : 20:41:16

Thanks Keith, very informative.

Is the purpose of the standoff to strengthen the mast to cope with compression loads at the point where the pole presses on the mast?

paul

Edited by - on

528
Navigator

Members Avatar

USA
181 Posts

Response Posted - 01/27/2007 : 08:53:33

I have been following the posts here over the last few weeks. In the mean time I developed what I think is an easy system. I want to test it a few more times before posting pics. It consists of a 1 and a quarter inch threaded steel pipe, winch on the top and a 12" eye hook on the bottom. The eye hooks to the boats bow eye (pulling fore), the pole rests against a block of wood with a semi circle cutout (pushing aft). This pushes against the bow stem fitting and is initially stabilized with a rope around the forward rail. Once raising or lowering is started, the tension is transfered to the nose and not the rail (though lateral stability of the pole is increased with the rope). I used galvanized fence post first and it totally bent with maximum force on it. I don't recommend anything light weight. The pole is about 7'. I want to cut and thread it for easy storage and reduced section weight. So far I am happy with it's performance, but still debugging before posting pics.

Edited by - on

Keith D.
Navigator

Members Avatar

USA
233 Posts

Response Posted - 02/12/2007 : 21:44:44

Paul I haven’t been on the web site for a while. The purpose of the standoff is not for strength but only to give the base of the pole a place to center it self. With out it the pole will slop around in the mast, being only held in place by only one point, the hole in front of the mast. The standoff could be a lot shorter and still work just fine.

Edited by - on

Page: of 2

Topic

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Jump To:

Association Forum

Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.