SailNet is a forum community dedicated to Sailing enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about sailing, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, repairs, reviews, maintenance, and more!

Spreader Issues

1814 Views 7 Replies 7 Participants Last post by capta, Mar 30, 2015

last mango

Discussion Starter · Mar 17, 2015

Have an Endeavour 38 and noticed the port spreader sagging down one day. Well on investigation when we pulled the spreader off the socket/base it was discovered part of the base was broken. One of the previous owners at some stage had a problem with this and went in and drilled into the broken portion and ran a sheet metal screw in and then just wired the bushing in that the retainer pin goes through on the spreader. Looks like the tried to put some epoxy or JB Weld type material to fill it some. When the bushing broke up, that's why the spreader end on the mast dropped and the ends on the stays sagged some. Mickey mouse way of doing it and has been that way awhile. Guessing the PO did this just to get by and sell it. The bad part is the spreader base is welded to the mast. This is an Isomat mast. So wondering if there are any bright ideas out there. Guess at some stage going to have to have it pulled to work on. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Attached a pic if I did this right
Another Day
Daphne, AL

ATTACH]45002[/ATTACH]

See less See more

Save

1 - 1 of 8 Posts

Atlas

· #7 · Mar 30, 2015

Re: Broken Spreader Socket

Hi LastMango, I've been watching this post for a week or so, but didn't try to answer as I'm really not qualified for it. However, since no one else has posted, I'll give it a shot. (Caveat emptor: I'm no boat expert, as I already said.)

To the best of my understanding, the mast hasn't been compromised by local buckling/ crippling of the sheet metal, and your only problem is how to remove the spreader base without hurting the mast section. If that's the case, you could leave the spreader bases in place and weld in new bases just below the original ones. This won't affect the tuning of your rig much, and you can avoid the risk of structural damage to the mast in attempting to remove the original spreader bases.