I thought about this mast vs the Powerex 85% RDM. Roughly the same price. However I haven't bought either so far as I was really unimpressed by the staff at the shop, don't really want skinny jean/moon boot wearing kiters telling me what mast to buy.

Appart from that it seems that the X6 RDM's warranty doesn't cover it in waves (seems rather retarded to me) can you confirm whether or not this is the case? The Powerex is covered in the waves according to their warranty page on their website, thou no idea how easy/hard it is to claim.

Eitherway, I'm probably gonna pick up an RDM mast sometime over summer, definately open for other suggestions as well... possibly Ezzy, or Loft? GUN masts maybe? Sails are a 5.9 North Duke, and 5.3 Naish Force... not the most compatible of sails I think, but I mainly want the RDM for the 5.3 Force.

p.s. North and Naish RDM's from what I have seen are way out of my budget, closer to $900 then $600.

swoosh said...
Appart from that it seems that the X6 RDM's warranty doesn't cover it in waves (seems rather retarded to me) can you confirm whether or not this is the case? The Powerex is covered in the waves according to their warranty page on their website, thou no idea how easy/hard it is to claim.

As far as I know the warranty generally only covers breakage as a result from manufacturing problems. Meaning if you sailing along and your mast suddenly breaks that should be covered. If on the other hand you go over the falls in big surf and end up snapping your mast no manufacturer will actually replace the mast based on warranty grounds.

That said, I took a friends XCombat over the falls a few weeks back in Gnaraloo. I actually thought I had killed the mast (and apparently so did everyone watching it from the beach). To my surprise everything pop-up without even a scratch. From what other people are saying RDMs are more forgiving in waves.

I haven't personally used Powerex masts but know a guy here in Sydney who has. I have had a chat with him the other day and seem to remember that mentioned he went through about 15 masts in a season. Yes, they did replace every single one of them. But in the end he got tired of swimming all the time...

... this was a while back mind you. I am finding that these days the quality of brands can change quite dramatically from season to season. Take Neil Pryde for example. A few years back I they had some real problems with their performance X9 racing masts. Yet I still have a couple of X5 masts from around 2000 that are still going strong.

Apparently Neil Pryde has just shifted their mast production back to their own factory in order to keep a closer eye on quality. I have also heard that the new Neil Pryde pre-production masts get tested for at least 100 hrs on the water in Maui first before they go into production. I guess at the end of the day no company wants their products to continuously fail. Not much profit in warranty claims.

Re industry standards I think this is down to the distributor in each country. without naming names here some are certainly better than others.

I remember when I used to live in Germany I only used Sunshine booms... this was back in 1997. They trusted their products so much that they replaced any broken boom no questions asked. I used them for about 5 years and they sure replaced every single broken boom and extension... then I discovered Chinook.

of course these days carbon booms rule the world...