Sound like you are reading all the bad stories about in mast furling, i think there will be many on this Forum that will tell you different. there are many that love it.
There to many good used boats out there to make it worth the cost of a mast swap. I don't know the boats location but it would be cheaper to buy a boat on the other side of the country (maybe the other side of the world) and have it shipped then to change a mast. if you have mast made to fit the boat and existing rigging figure about 25k for the mast and another 10k to ship and rig. Mainsail would also have to be modified or replaced.

 

You might want to start with some easier to find prices.
The cars that the sail will now need, a track for them. Battens, probably a whole new main sail?
Lazy jack lines, sail bag.
And all the running rigging now needed to reef, cause you can't just roll up the main a bit in the furler anymore. These lines typically run down inside the boom, while they don't have to, would you really want them not to?
The mast itself would probably be more expensive than all of the rest, but knowing how much all the little things will add up to will need to be known, and might be enough to convince you to keep looking for a boat you don't have to replace so much of even though it's not broken.

 

Most people who investigate changing rigs already own the boat. It seems to make sense that when buying a boat, find one that has the rig you want. It's a lot of work and expense to change your in-mast system for another. Perhaps you can find one that already fits your needs.

P.S. By the way, I love my in-mast furling.

 

What's with all the in-mast furling bashing threads lately... I get that sail shape suffers some, but other than that, it seems like a great system.

 

Thanks for all the feedback.

To clarify my avoidance of in-mast furling: My theory is that everything on the boat is going to break at some point, because it's a tough environment and you can't expect everything to hold up forever. The two issues with things breaking are the effort to fix it and how hard it is to make a temporary fix if it breaks at a really bad time. In-mast furling (in my estimation) rates worse than a lazy-jack/sailbag in both those regards: fixing it may involve going to the top of the mast, while fixing tangled lazy lines is unlikely to involve leaving the cabin top (for example) ... in an emergency, you can just cut the lazy lines and manually stack the sail. Additionally, I've researched the cost of installing a sailbag/lazy jacks from scratch (because a lot of the boats I'm considering buying would need that as an upgrade) and it's not that expensive. While I don't know exactly what it would cost to replace or do major repairs on an in-mast furler, it seems reasonable that it's a good bit more expensive _and_ liable to be something I can't DIY.

So, I wouldn't claim that I'm bashing in-mast furling, just that the benefit doesn't seem to outweigh the cost in my estimation. And if someone has specific stories about how I'm wrong about in-mast furling, I'd be super interested to be better educated.

 

You've certainly identified some of the issues between in-mast furling to a traditional hanked-on, slab reefed main. The principal advantage of furling is the ability to have infinite reefing options and, more often, not needing to leave the cockpit. I have in-mast and like it.

Still, if you're set on a traditional mast, do not invest in swapping one out. There are thousands available in both configurations. You could pay for a ton of shipping/delivery for the cost of a new rig.

 

I would contact Beneteau North America. They have a parts department that is extremely supportive of past models and very reasonably priced for parts. I have helped friends with Beneteaus that needed parts that are both proprietary and parts which are OEM from stock manufactured pieces, and in all cases their prices were less than from other sources and their service was exemplary. They should be able to quote you a price for an entire 'traditional rig'. once you combine that with the costs of sails, and any changes to the deck hardware, that would give you a 'worst case scenario' price. In the best case, you might be able to sell your old rig for some fraction of what a new rig would cost, but I would not count on that.

I suspect that Minnewaska is right that the least expensive way to purchase a 351 with a conventional rig is to buy one that has one already and ship it in from almost anywhere.

Jeff

 

I would have thought $20,000 for the mast, $5,000 rigging, and a few $k installation.

But I could be way off by a few cents.


As Jeff says, ring Beneteau parts in the USA.
Spars are from US Spars/Z Spars

You can download the parts list off the net and ring them for the prices.

 

Just... get a boat without the in mast furling (IMF). Even if you do get the IMF does it really matter? I mean really? Are you going to round cape horn? sail the voyage of Sinbad? what are you really going to be doing with the boat you finally wind up in? I'm Guessing 99% recreational, fair weather and seas.

 

Agreed. Hard to argue against furling unless you're a thousand miles from land, depending utterly on your boat. I'd prefer in-boom by a mile, personally. But if your sailing plans don't include major ocean crossings, probably no need to sweat it.

 

Instead if swapping out the mast, if this is the boat you really want, consider talking to a rigger and just adding a track for using a normal sail. It would be significantly cheaper and if you want you can always go back to the in-mast furling.


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Instead if swapping out the mast, if this is the boat you really want, consider talking to a rigger and just adding a track for using a normal sail. It would be significantly cheaper and if you want you can always go back to the in-mast furling.

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Further to the foregoing, it would be a simple matter to secure a curved plate over the slot on the aft side of the mast and secure the new sail track to that. Far less than the cost of a new spar (which isn't cheap) to say nothing of the associated labor costs. Frankly, however, from an economic perspective, it would be wiser to simply buy a boat with a traditional mast.

FWIW...

 

I can't afford recreational/fair weather

 

It wasn't that long ago there were threads about the devils spore called, furling head sails . If you don't want it don't have it, If you do have it then embrace it, it just mayt be the best bit of kit you ever owned.