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Old 02-28-2010, 07:55 AM
phmccartney phmccartney is offline
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Virginia
Posts: 3
Default One last question

Hope im not overstaying my welcome with all these questions. Snow has melted here in the mid atlantic and i was able to bring my rod home and get a good look. heres what i can see:
upper end of forestay was bent - could have happened when they dropped my mast, but id say at a minimum, two inches would have to be cut off to remove the bend.

two lower stays show wear on the rod where they emerge from the Navtang. Two others have the ball frozen in place and cannot be freed from the tang. These are the older K100 tangs and i suspect im witnessing the very reasons why these were dropped in favor of the stemball design.

Finally, the navec C-style turnbuckle screws all look to me to be the long versions, suggesting that the rods might have been reheaded onee during thier 35 years (but long enough ago that they were still using ball ends). It looks like i have about two inches of adjustment left on the screws.

The last survey of the boat was done in 2002, in which the surveyor simply did visual inspection with binoculars and wrote that it looked serviceable. Given all this, would anyone seriously consider taking this stuff in for more sophisticated inspection when the best outcome would be standing up a rig that is a mix of new parts and 35 year old parts?

Assuming it woudl be ok to use aluminum sleeves to reduce those 1" and 7/8" holes down to 1/2" for a conventional through-bolted tang, i could buy an entire wire or Dynex rig for what just a set of the new Navtec K150 tangs would cost. Im not a racer..im a weekend cruiser who's wife cares more that the mast will stay up than i do about going fast. Am i really being hasty in giving up on the rod?
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