MacGregorSailors.com

I spent few hours on my drive way rigging up my for the first time before I head out to the lake.

Had some issues, but I got the mast up.

But the rotating mast seem to be almost impossible to rotate with my hand. Very sticky.
It appears that all the rigging and weight of the jib, sail and boom is loading up the rotating joint quite a bit.

I am not sure if it'll rotate with the force of wind..... Is it supposed to be really sticky (firm) to rotate? or is it supposed to rotate freely?

There are 3 washers sandwiched in between the mast base and bracket. Should there a thrust roller bearing or something?

I don't know what it's supposed to be like..

Thanks in advance.

I can rotate mine freely by hand. BWY sells bearing, but I still have the original setup with 3 washers (like yours). I had the same problem first season, then got in a habit of removing mast base at the beginning of each season and apply a lot of marine rated grease around each washer. Works great for me.

Should rotate freely. The stock washers compress and don't allow for easy rotation. As mentioned, grease will help. I found this only lasts so long and the mast stops rotating. YMMV.

I bought the BWY thrust bearings and they work great. Either way, the correct tightness on the bolt is essential. You could easily find a thrust bearing to replace the washers at your local hardware store.

--Russ

Your rake may be off. Is the mast loading the three washers evenly, or is the mast obviously either forward or aft on the washers?

Honestly you needn't be able to rotate the mast by hand, but it should flop side-to-side when you tack under normal wind forces.

Thrust bearings are neither necessary nor even desirable, as they'll be destroyed every season. The three oiled bronze washers do the job.

I like to use standard anti-seize compound as the lubricant for those thrust washers.
My mast stays up 24/7/365 and it was last serviced three years ago.
It still rotates with ease.
Good stuff, but don't go crazy with it, it's hard to clean up if it gets on anything besides the washers.

As stated earlier, perhaps your mast isn't tensioned/set-up correctly and adding to the issue?

mastreb wrote:Thrust bearings are neither necessary nor even desirable, as they'll be destroyed every season. The three oiled bronze washers do the job.

I could never get the bronze washers to rotate well. Perhaps mast rake or the bolt was too tight. No matter, I didn't like the friction they provided. Would kind of rotate while lube was fresh.

There were some folks who complained that the BWY thrust bearings chewed up after one season. I believe BWY have changed to a better type now. Mine have been in place for 5 years without issue. I lube them with white lithium grease. They are going strong. Mast rotates at will.

jasonsjwou wrote:I spent few hours on my drive way rigging up my for the first time before I head out to the lake.

Had some issues, but I got the mast up.

But the rotating mast seem to be almost impossible to rotate with my hand. Very sticky.
It appears that all the rigging and weight of the jib, sail and boom is loading up the rotating joint quite a bit.

I am not sure if it'll rotate with the force of wind..... Is it supposed to be really sticky (firm) to rotate? or is it supposed to rotate freely?

There are 3 washers sandwiched in between the mast base and bracket. Should there a thrust roller bearing or something?

I don't know what it's supposed to be like..

Thanks in advance.

When the mast is down, does the base bracket rotate freely by hand? You may want to remove the bracket from the mast and check the torque on the rotating assembly.

My boat has 1 bronze or brass bushing. I keep it lubricated with evinrude grease and it rotates well.

When I installed a Johnson lever on the forestay I could then really tension up the rig. I got the rake correct and used a loos gauge on the shrouds (350lb outer and 175 inner from memory - but been awhile) - the point being that the shrouds played like a guitar string once all set up . . . . impossible without the forestay Johnson lever btw . . . and the stock mast bearing still worked and the mast rotated.

EZ wrote:
When the mast is down, does the base bracket rotate freely by hand? You may want to remove the bracket from the mast and check the torque on the rotating assembly.

My boat has 1 bronze or brass bushing. I keep it lubricated with evinrude grease and it rotates well.

Yes it rotates freely. I tightened the nylon lock nut, and backed off until the bracket freely rotates.

I will put some axle grease on the washers and see what happens.

jasonsjwou wrote:

EZ wrote:
When the mast is down, does the base bracket rotate freely by hand? You may want to remove the bracket from the mast and check the torque on the rotating assembly.

My boat has 1 bronze or brass bushing. I keep it lubricated with evinrude grease and it rotates well.

Yes it rotates freely. I tightened the nylon lock nut, and backed off until the bracket freely rotates.

I will put some axle grease on the washers and see what happens.

Ok, so that basically means the resistance is mostly due to rig tension. You may want to disassemble the rotating bracket assembly and apply the grease between the washer and bracket surfaces. One time I applied the grease without disassembling (didn't have time to disassemble). It worked ok, but didn't last as long.

If you still have a lot of resistance, its probably a good idea to check rig tension as others have described.

When I bought my boat, the first sail I had, the mast went to port, and stayed there Very hard to move and tacking was certainly not causing it to move... I lived with it for a while but eventually I decided I'd have to do something about it.

The problem was that it was horribly set up from the PO who obviously did very little sailing with it. If your sails are in new condition, you may be in the same boat

The solution was to put the mast up in my back yard, loosen off all shrounds and climb up and down for 2 or 3 hours adjusting them while making sure the mast was not bending off to either side. It was my first time adjusting a rig and I have no idea if I did it quite right, but I know my mast rotated as it should after that. I still have the washers too. I know because that's what I thought was the problem and I greased them up to start with which didn't seem to make any difference.. It was the tuning of my rig a bit better which solved it.

To cut a long story short, sounds like your rigging is way out of tune. You need to play with it

I've got a loos gauge if you need to borrow it. PM me if interested. I put the bearings in and have used them for several years without problems (haven't done much with the boat the last three years, but they still rotate fine)