This wasn't a big problem because 99% of my sailboarding is done on the Tamar river just across the road from my house. But the mast is very awkward to store in its full length (won't fit in my shed) and a little more tedious to transport now that I don't have a decent set of roof racks (won't fit in my car).
Well, this Summer I'm planning another trip to Musselroe Bay for the first time in years. Now that the internet is much more widely used that when the mast originally became stuck I decided to search the internet, and in particular the 'Sea Breeze' forums, for tips on how to separate a stuck mast. Of course I found that there are a LOT of ideas out there including:
- Clamp two booms to the mast, one each side of the join, and turn them in opposite directions using their length to get the extra leverage
- Place the two ends of the mast on raised (and cushioned) surfaces, push down in the middle and insert a coin into the crack of the joint. Turn, repeat with a larger coin, or combinations of coins. Keep turning and increasing the width of the coin(s).
- Hold the mast horizontally with hands in the middle on either side of the joint. Shake up and down as hard as possible causing the mast to bend in alternate directions repeatedly.
- Tie one end of the mast to a tree and the other to the car tow ball. Drive away.
- Insert the mast base, and use a block of wood and a mallet the hit the mast base hard.
- Poke a wide-diameter and long dowel or pole inside the mast from the bottom and use a mallet to bash the top piece out from the inside.
- Hold the bottom end of the mast like you'd hold a baseball bat and whack the ground with it hard so that the top end of the mast hits the gound. Turn a bit, and hit the ground again. Keep turning and repeating. Use a soft grass-covered ground so the tip of the mast doesn't get completely destroyed.
- Buy enough plumbing fittings to turn the end of the mast into a hose fitting, attach the hose and pressurise the mast.
- Use hot water. Or cold ice. Or one of each on each piece of the mast.
Well I was inspired. I wanted to try the two-boom method as it seems the safest to me and was the most highly recommended, but I only have one boom. So I had to try something else.
Using the coins method, I started with a butter knife, then a 5 cent coin and eventually managed to get the joint to scrape open by the width of a 2 dollar coin plus a 10 cent coin. But I was clearly not going to be able to line up enough coins to make it much further than that.
Next, I tried whacking the ground with it. It was working - only marginally quicker than the coins method and at great risk to the integrity of the mast but there was no physical limit to the separation this method could achieve. So I persisted, turning between each whack and checking the gap every 20 smacks on the ground or so. Eventually, after a full quarter of an hour of smacking the ground with the mast, it had separated by about 3 centimetres and I was able to start twisting the two pieces in opposite directions by hand and then pull it apart completely.
I was way more excited than anybody should be about being able separate the two pieces of a stuck mast! After TEN YEARS mind you!
I then cleaned up the ends of the two mast pieces and they now join and separate as easily as they did when brand new. It actually fits in my shed now, for the first time ever! And I can take it away in the car when I go camping later in the summer.
I'm glad nobody had a video camera out. Smacking the ground continuously with a 4.6 metre pole looks kind of ridiculous (and is REALLY hard on the hands and wrists).
