Day 1 and 2:

Galt's New Rig

Not being able to deny my son the thrill of A-Cat sailing any longer, we set out to develop a rig that would be more manageable rig for his 90lbs.  The Hobie 14 we acquired last year has really renewed his love of sailing and has been a great first cat.  Anyone who has sailed a H14 knows it is not an easy boat to sail.  It is heavy, underpowered and has a finicky rig that when set up correctly flops around absurdly.  Not to mention it's perhaps the hardest boat to tack that I have ever sailed!  But all this has made Galt a better sailor.  After spending time on the H14, I thought it would be great to have a youth A-Cat rig with all the usual sail controls that would actually respond and thereby help him develop a better understanding of modern rigs.

5'  section & one wedge

With that goal in mind, I pulled an old Australian Composites A-cat mast off the wall of my garage and started brain storming.  Obviously it had to be cut down but the real challenge would be to soften it so that it would respond to the sail controls.  I spoke with Tony Arends, someone who's been known to think outside the box, and we decided that cutting a wedge from both sides of the extrusion for a length down the mast would be the best approach.  But how wide, for how long and how much do we cut off?  For this we went with very scientific seat-of-the-pants WAG methodology.  We sketched out a scale drawing of a standard A with the usual 29'6" mast followed by other scale drawings of a rig with 4' , 5' and then 6' cut off.  Galt voted for the 4', but cooler heads prevailed and we compromised on the 5' reduction.  After all, he's about 5' tall.  I told you it was very scientific!
A few more sketches and it was decided that 1 1/2" was about as wide as the wedge could be and still get the halves to form a reasonably smooth section.
We decided to reproduce the proportional location of all the mast elements including spreader location, diamond wire attachments and hound.  With this in mind, we determined that we could extend the taper 7' down the mast having it stop about 1' above the hound attachment.

Drilling for new attachments

After cutting 5' off the top and cutting our 1.5" x 7' wedge out of each side, we pulled the sections together and wrapped the top twice around with 2" carbon tape.  Next we laid 3 layers of 6oz E glass tape on each side starting with 3", then 2" and finally 1" wide tape.  We decided against carbon tape since the entire point was to soften, not stiffen, the top section.  The tape was laid up with West and wrapped in Peel Ply and tape.

Lay Down The Tape

Initial Finishing

After the initial finishing and moving all the attachment points, the mast is taking shape.  Once we get diamond wires on, we'll post the final picks.

Old and New Sections

Next,

the new (old) sail!
Still looking for a platform!