I know yoyo has been experimenting with tip extensions with some success. Maybe PM him.

One of my mates made one, just hacksawed 20 cm off the top of an old mast. Then he stuck a broom handle inside it to act as a ferrule, and painted it black (looks a bit less dodgy then).

He reckons it's the ducks nuts

NotWal said...

There's a bloke in Bris who makes them, Tim Hughes. He takes a piece of aluminium tube and presses a mandrel into one end to expand it to fit snugly over the mast tip. Its nice and light. He could probably make you one if you ask him nicely. Pm me for his details. I think I've still got his card somewhere.

The thing to consider is that the mast will be a little softer than the mast the sail was designed for. This is unlikely to be an improvement but certainly ok for non competitive free ride, and cheap and convenient too.

Are you talking about tip extenders? I was actually asking about the ones that go at the base. You add them to the bottom of the mast, and you use a regular mast extension as well, preferably a pretty short one.

North make 50cm SDM extenders and 30cm RDM ones. Challenger make a 30cm RDM one too, but I couldn't find any other brand making them for RDM masts. The price I was quoted for a North RDM extender was about AUD$150. Well worth it - IF they don't break or lead to mast breakage in waves!

I've been using a 50cm North SDM extender for a couple of years on big sails - you can use a 480 or 490 mast for 10m sails, and secondhand 490 masts are easy and cheap to come by, instead of shelling out the big bucks for a 520 formula mast. But I'm wondering how they work with skinnys, wave sails, and of course wave conditions.

As for tip extenders -- I've got one somewhere but have never tried it. Maybe I'll give it a go..

That was some fine sarcasm from you Willy!
Nice humour. Particularly liked the thong for footstraps.
(make sure you use "double pluggers" so they don't pull out of the board!)

But seriously, I made a 38cm extendo out of the bottom half of a broken Fibrespar 460.
It allowed me to run a 7.5 streetracer on my 460 instead of having to buy a 490.

It worked great. When people say "yeah but surely the mast was too soft." well that wasn't the case, cos I only needed too use the 7.5 when the wind was really light, (so the softer mast wasn't being over distorted by the wind,-in fact it probably helped early planing) and as soon as the wind got any stronger, I'd switch to a 6.5 anyway.

Got the broken 460 from a shop for free, used the bottom section as the base, and created the ferule from a section higher up. (use calipers to work out the required diameter, cut the ferule accordingly, slide it up from inside the bottom, and epoxy or polyester resin it in)
Bob's ya Uncle....never had any probs.
(Wouldn't trust the broom stick technology either)