[alberg30] Mast support beam

[Philippe.de-Bersuder]

Hello Peter, I write to you from France. I have an very old boat named "ORION" - Triton 28 feet from Alberg, made in France by Mr Jouet, and I have quite the same problems
.
My boat is very old, 1967, in polyester. The deck is in sandwich (sorry for my poor english, I hope you'll understand). As the boat is getting older, the boat starts to "bananas" because the sandwich lost its structural resistance, also there is some zone (in the 1st 1/3 in front of the deck) starting to delaminate. So the boat is'nt so heavy as before, and the wires moves while sailing, so the foot of the mast (in alloy) doesn't stay perfectly in contact with the steel plate under, and is getting round instead of perfectly flat. This is very bad, because the mast can go like a spaguetti at any moment under charge. I have seen it already, so I reduce immediatly the sails. AnywayI think I'll have to do it flat (remove 3 or 4 millimeters) to correct this problem. I do a school of boat repair during 9 months last year, and the teacher says that the mast has to be as perpendicular as possible with the deck for family boat (in race, you do what you want!) and in all case the foot as to be in perfect contact. Mr Tabarly, famous french sailing man, lost a mast in race because of this problem. I think it can be much more than 1000 kgs pressure on the mast foot. So you have to do something for that fast.

Under, in the cabin, just above the door, the "wall" get a deformation about 1/2 inch, it's no more flat. Between the ceiling above the passage (between toilets and box), and the deck, there is some space where is a heavy wood about 1&1/2 inch acajou (red wood) to support the mast, this wood is NOT strongly fixed on the walls - (the plan is the same as Alberg 30). The wood is stratified into the plastic deck and the deck is on the walls and the woods around the door. So the polyester is deformed by pressure and years. But to repair or change that, what a job! 

2 years ago, I change some wires and the guy from the factory said to me "be careful these wires are MUCH stronger than the original ones, so don't pull to much on it". In fact the mast is strong enough, but not the deck. Like you I sail in winter (meditterrannee) and I break 1 wire, thats why I stopped the boat in south of Spain to remove the mast and check all, because I want to go far with this boat later.

what about all that? There are some solutions: 
1) rebuild the bridge stronger. I know a man in France who have do that (He have a Triton).

2) as our boats are old, don't ask to much: reduce, reduce the sails. 

3) The plate under your mast has to be in stainless steel (4 or 5 millimeters), as large as possible between the front panel and the "chimney" (sorry!) under the boom on the original plan. If I remind good, The mast in Alberg 30 is placed on the front door, but mine is between the 2 doors, so the weight is supported by the 2 walls.
 
4) try to do a larger wood supported by the woods of the door: it means cut the ceiling, and many things around, and remove the original wood under the mast (if you have one), then put the new one, adjust all this and do a new stratification to end the work. A lot of work to renforce the box under the mast.

About automatic pilot, I have an Autohelm 2000+. This thing is not very good for my boat, because it's not very strong nor waterproof, it needs a lot of energy and also my boat needs an tiller angle wind side so it's not very efficient if there's some wind. But it's good in low and medium weather, and under engine, with GPS. I just buy a wind pendulum regulator (second hand, as usual...).

Last thing, I don't know if you heard something about a boat named "Jean du Sud" and it's owner, a canadian man. He wrotes a book (not really famous but) where he describe his trip on an Alberg 30 around the world. He have some problems with his mast because of the stainless plates where the wire are fixed on, too thin as he said.

OK. Hope to read you. Bye,
philippe.de-bersuder at wanadoo.fr

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