carbon mast - experiences anybody?

[rkwright]

I had one. Made in Argentina by . . . I can't recall, but will look it up if necessary. Seems like it was a British company with a factory in the South with cheap labour.

Anyway, the mast was horrible. We could not keep the main halyard from chafing through. Evidently there was something sharp inside. Never figured it out, and we had several sets of technicians work on it in New Zealand.

Being built up like fibreglass, instead of being extruded, I guess they allowed something to drip or otherwise cause a sharp lip or edge. Every major port we entered the first thing we had to do was buy new cordage.

Horrible company that. We even had turning screws/turnbuckles they provided us snap. They sent out a crew to fix that problem on this brand new boat with brand new mast and rigging, and the bloody staff got violently seasick while we were at anchor!

Also I never felt the supposed performance advantage we got on this cruising yacht was worth the tens of thousand dollars in price for carbon spars..

If you go with carbon fibre, use a North American, European or Japanese manufacturer and not a Third World one. Price is not everything.

Having said that, I must say that the boat itself, built in Chile, was a fine one built with quality in mind and attention to detail.

[double u]

thank you for sharing your experience - what idiots with a rubbish product!
for us it would not be a choice of carbon-mast company, as we are looking at secondhand boats & some have carbon masts (which in itself I think a desireable feature, onmly if we have to add fittings like a solent-stay tang it seems to start getting complicated, maybe maststeps too (we'd need them to the lower spreaders)