I purchased a new tapered mast for my MK3 from the buy and sell on this site. I renewed all running rigging and the lower stays. It was then I realised there are and never have been any spreaders or cross trees. Uppers are 5160 from base of mast, forestay about 3 cm higher and lowers are 2680 from base of mast. Do I need spreaders or crosstrees or would it work as is?
Hi Jim
Besides the spreaders giving the middle of your mast stiffness athwartship, if they are correctly swept back they will also give the mast the right amount of pre-bend. If your chain-plates or deck fittings for both uppers and lowers are aft of mast base (which they probably are), when you tighten the lowers, the mast will have an inverse pre-bend .... very bad.
cheers, Peter
Thanks Peter, lowers are actually in line with base of mast. Other problem is the uppers are 500 lower than rigging spec for Mk111 so would have to figure out position for spreaders. I will try it out on the weekend as it stands.
