Noisy mast cables

[Tobaccoblender]

Hello!
I wonder if anyone can help me by suggesting ways to silence annoying noisy cables that are inside the mast of my 45ft Gulfstar sloop. My wife and I live aboard and are finding their slapping increasingly irritating. I thought about injecting polyurethene foam into the mast but realised I'd be buggered in the future if I needed to replace a cable or add a new one. Short of cutting a fair sized hole in the mast so as to reach in and tie them up (not keen on that idea!), I'm stuck.
Any clever ideas?
Cheers
Paddy

[Cheechako]

Your halyards are internal too? Are they taught? Surprised the cables aren't in a conduit....

[Tobaccoblender]

Weirdly, no. The halyards are all external (and well tied back while we are moored in one spot for the winter) and all that is inside the mast is cables. I confirmed this by lifting the floorboards at the base and I can see every cable that comes out through gland nuts. You'd have thought they would have run the cables through a conduit but it seems they didn't...

[tkeithlu]

Do you have access to the top or bottom of the mast bore? If so, how about a few bunched rags spaced on a light line, pulled up (or pulled down) to gently push the cables to one side, but still being removable in the future?

[Tobaccoblender]

Now there's a good idea..
However I have only been up to the top once, to unjam the genoa halyard, and although I didn't get high enough up to look properly at the masthead, would it be wide open? Somehow I doubt it would be, but really I have no idea...I can access the base through a little inspection cover through which I could pull a pullthrough down, but I'd need to run that pullthrough down from the masthead first...and I'm not sure how easy that would be..
Are masts normally open at the top, do you know?

[markwesti]

I hope I'm mistaking but I think the only way you will be able to fix your problem is to get the mast off the boat and install a conduit . Just think of how much fun you will have you can install LED lighting. Maybe even paint the mast , service the mast head sheaves the list is long . One thing I have heard of is drilling a hole in tennis balls and putting in all the wiring , but I think a conduit is best . Good luck .

[Tobaccoblender]

Hmmmm....doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me! We are lying at anchor...

[MerryBee]

We had the same issue with our Morgan 28OI... a couple of solutions that we've heard of but you must have the mast down to do it:
1- 3 nylon tie wraps spaced 120* apart every 4-6 ft with the tails cut to fit snugly inside.
2- foam pipe insulation tubes from home improvement center, but don't depend on the self-stick adhesive ( don't ask why I know this!). Again a few tie wraps will make sure the tubes stay closed
BTW, I'm willing to bet the mast cap is NOT open...

[Suijin]

This may sound a bit bitchy but if you have a 30 year old H45, and you don't even know what's at the top of the mast or inside of it, you're due to take it down an do a serious inspection and refurbishment, no matter what the last owner and the surveyor said. I guarantee you that you'll find plenty of stuff requiring your attention and when the smoke clears you'll be glad you did it, even if it ends up being expensive.

There are threads with laundry lists of things to do when you take down the stick. If you don't know the condition of the following, off the top of your head, you should seriously consider it:

- Mast step
- All wiring in the mast, including VHF and radar
- Sheaves
- Any hydraulic lines (e.g. vang)
- Shroud ends aloft
- Insulators
- Pretty much anything screwed into the mast with a fastener

I find it hard to believe that all of your halyards are external, particularly your main halyard(s). That would be rather odd on that boat.

If you do have first hand knowledge that all the above is good and sound, just ignore me.

If you don't want to install conduit, a ghetto solution is to put zip ties with the tails left on in a spiral pattern around a few of the wires going up the mast. Will help to essentially baffle the interior.

[tkeithlu]

The mast top will have a cap, usually with cast fittings for halyards and shrouds and the like, or at least a solid plug to attach them to, given that the mast itself is rather fragile aluminum tubing. But.... those wires get into the mast somehow at the top, even if with grommets and bunches of silicone goo, so there should be a way to get an electrician's snake (long flat wire with hook on end, $15.62 at Home Depot) into the top and down to your inspection port. Then pull rags, wireties, tennis balls, or whatever back up.

Suijin has a good point and need not apologize for being "bitchy." If the upper end of your boat has not been inspected in 30 years, you owe it a visit. However, note that the task of adding dampers at spaces up your mast is basically the same whether the mast is vertical or horizontal.

The mast is a conduit of sorts, just oversized. Wherever you have a conduit, it is wise to leave a length of parachute cord in place so you can easily run new wires up it as needed.

[rwidman]

In a residential well, the pipe for the water and the electrical wires need to be kept away from the well casing and rocks. There are plastic inserts that are placed around the pipe to keep it centered.

These may or may not accomplish what you need to do but you would still have to get to the wires and remove them to install the guides.

Maybe not the best thought, but one to consider.

[wsmurdoch]

I have two sailboats with wires dropped inside the mast without conduit. The wires made a racket as the boats rocked at anchor. In neither case could I easily remove the wires.

In boat with external halyards I dropped a short length of bicycle chain with a long cord attached down from the top of the mast. I pulled the end of the cord out from the bottom of the mast until I had a length a little longer than the height of the mast. I tied a piece of foam rubber just larger than the inside of the mast to the cord every four feet and pulled the whole lot back into the mast. It worked, silencing the slapping wires. But, the foam stays wet inside the mast, and if the boat were in salt water, I'd worry a little about unseen corrosion.

On the other boat (which has internal halyards), I took several lengths of 1/2" I.D. foam pipe insulation, slipped them over the bundled wires, and pushed them one after the next up the mast. I taped them together where the bottom of one touched the top of the next. I put four large cable ties around the joining tape and foam insulation spaced at 90 degrees, one pair on the upper piece of insulation and another pair around the lower. I left the tails on the cable ties to help keep the assembly centered inside the mast. This method also worked silencing the slapping cables. It leaves some room around the foam encased cables for the halyards to run, and the foam is closed cell, should not absorb water, and should not be always touching the inside of the mast for long periods of time in the same places, so I think I am avoiding the corrosion issue.

[Tobaccoblender]

Thank you gentlemen, I am sufficiently chastised and now have plenty to think about!

[JPA Cate]

G'day tobacco blender,

One time time, we installed a radar cable inside a mast, and boy! did it bang around! What we did was to make two holes in the mast, going up, every 6 ft. or so. And stuck a wire fiche in, snagged the cable, fed seizing wire through the two holes and around the cable (easier to say it fast than to do it), and secured the cable to the mast, up to the spreaders, where the radar was. Cost almost nothing, and quiet as death. It worked fine.

Ann

[Tobaccoblender]

Hi there- I had devised method in my mind but am not keen on the idea of holes going up the mast....I am not sure if I am being silly but I worry about the idea of seawater dribbling in through the holes and setting corrosion in the aluminium mast.....did you seal the holes up with anything?