LOL yes! I normally step the mast myself and she shows up after!

Thanks for the testimonial on cockpit survival rates!

Thanks - glad you liked it!

Excellent!!!

Yes Farrier’s designs are very well thought out!

Yeah I'm a bit torn about leaving it in the water. It takes about 30 minutes longer to sail from the trailer than from a dock, but on the water you have to clean the bottom. Plus it's convenient to have it on the trailer at home for projects and repairs. It takes me about 30 minutes to drive to the dock, so just a single repair trip per sail outing makes up the difference for us.

Excellent points - you can't really leave the trailer winch with the mast half way up to sort out something that has fouled!

We have a large shackle on a bow protector to secure the boat to the trailer, stand the mast then unfasten when we launch. I agree, be aware of load balance when unlocking the trailer winch or unhitching.

@@sailingmahina1 That’s a good approach - I had a friend whose boat slid off the trailer on the way down the ramp before reaching the water!

Thanks! I see you guys got an F-boat - congrats and welcome to the club! I have a whole playlist of Farrier / Corsair Tips and maybe you’ll find some of the other vids useful for your new boat as well! There’s also an active Farrier./ Corsair Trimaran Group which is very helpful (fct.groups.io/). Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions!

Excellent - good luck with your search!!!

The F-9A is a great boat! We prefer to raise in the parking lot because then we can leave the crossbeams and gin pole on the truck, but do raise on the water about 20% of the time if the ramp is congested etc. We trailer to different ramps for various events so it's nice to have the flexibility. Our mast is aluminum and 38', so a slight turbo rig for this boat, and it's also pretty heavy. Sometimes I wish it were lighter, but I also appreciate never having to worry about it!

Glad you found it helpful - I’m continuing to tweak too!

Thanks Greg! I'd love to see your system in action! That's an interesting idea to just use the forward beam cross member support, as it would save the step of installing the gin pole. Just may not be quite enough leverage for a longer or heavier mast. Or having a gin pole that attaches to the deck and just folds down between retrieval and next launch. Look forward to seeing you out there!

The beams on an F27 are much longer than on modern tris. That's probably why the older Ian Farrier designs used the cross bar for raising in stead.

@@sail4life Interesting point re: the longer beams on the F27! According to the sail plan the mast of the F27 is also about 3' / 1m shorter than the F-82R which would make it a bit easier to raise with a smaller lever.

Never sailed on one but that's a really cool looking boat!

Haven’t tried it on an F-31R but our mast is only a tiny bit shorter and aluminum, whereby the F-31R typically has a carbon mast so may not be too much different in weight. And as you probably saw in the FCT Forums other F-31/F-9 owners do use this technique. I prefer the cockpit winch method because 1) you can raise the mast either on the trailer or on the water depending on the prevailing conditions at the ramp and 2) you have much better visibility of things e.g. lines that might get fouled and 3) you can guide the mast back onto the roller as you lower it. It does seem more dangerous being so close to underneath the mast, but you are actually off to the side, and despite seemingly high loads they are still well below the breaking strength of properly sized gear.

Sure, gin pole is about 8.5’ long, 1.66” diameter, 0.15” wall thickness. Sorry I don’t know what units you prefer!

Hi Garth, the best shot of the deck mounted "mast raising stay bracket" is probably around 2:10-2:15 in the video, but it's not a great shot - try pausing the video for a better look. It's basically just an aluminum fitting bolted to the deck, with an eye in line with the mast pivot point. There's a standard stainless shackle through that, and the Dyneema mast raising wires and gin pole supports (not shown in that shot) are attached to the shackle with a trucker hitch. The jib and spinnaker halyards are also attached to the same shackle as backups. I'll try to get you some better pictures...

Yes centering the mast is key. I had some issues with my F22. I still have to perfect the system. I bought the boat with a selfmade system and i think i didnt get the idea very well. I think now i have a better idea of the centering mechanics. Cheers from Belgium.

@@NICOLAS25478 Yes it definitely takes some work to refine the system. Our system is also custom made. It’s really important that the mast and gin pole stay cantered through the lift and aren’t able to twist to one side, and that all the pivots are aligned to maintain constant tension throughout the lift. So far the mast raising wires and halyard backup on the mast, plus the smaller Dyneema stays on the gin pole have been very reliable. We had some scary moments early on before we got to this point but learned from them.

Glad you liked the video! The mast pivot hinge components were initially manufactured by the previous owner and I’ve done some tweaking and refining.

The aft support is mostly to transfer the weight of the mast off the roller for trailering because I was concerned that leaving it there while the trailer bounces down the road places undue forces on the aft section of the hull e.g. where the trailer bunks end. In other words I wanted to transfer the weight of the mast as directly to the trailer as possible without stressing the boat. Also the folded prodder doesn't support the mast in any way, it's just lashed to the mast so it doesn't fall down. There's definitely more than one way to do this!

I think breaking the mast is a valid concern given the geometry you describe! However it might still work if you attached the gin pole to a strong pivot point on the cockpit coaming forward of the mast, as long as it’s structurally sound enough to take the compression. I would size the gin pole to be about the same as the J dimension, or from that point to the forestay attachment. Ideally you would also attach lateral guys on adjacent pivots outboard on the coaming to keep the pole on centreline as it rotates. Does this make sense?

@@SailingTipsCa Having used the gin pole technique successfully on deck stepped monohulls, the lateral guy lines make very good sense, especially if in the same plane as the the mast step pivot point. A mast going sideways is never good. However in my Super Tramp's open cockpit/floor stepped mast, the coaming area would not be supportive. That does open my thinking though, in that I may be able to use the given infrastructure, the folded front beams to act as the base for a crane like attachment point for an extension high enough to get past that initial horizontal moment I call 'no man's land', when still less than 45 degrees. Trying to keep it simple, especially for time and storage of extra equipment is a factor as well.

Yes I’m thankfully able to use the exact same bolts for the cross member as I do for sailing, so no need to swap them out. I use stainless wing nuts back sides of the crossmember. But if your sailing bolts are too short, could you not drill and tap a new hole in the crossmember to thread the sailing bolts directly into that, without requiring them to go all the way through?

Thanks - good eye!!! The halyards exit the mast about 1m/3' up from the base, and then go to clutches on the mast about 20cm/8" below that. From there they go through turning blocks at the base of the mast, then through deck organizers, and back to the cockpit. But with the clutches on the mast, there is generally only tension below that and adjacent to the rotation point when hoisting sails or tensioning halyards with the cockpit winches. During normal sailing the halyards are slack adjacent to the rotation point so the mast is free to rotate up to 90' or full rotation. The one exception to this is the spinnaker halyard, where we also have a clutch on the cabin top. But that's to facilitate dousing, so just before dousing we transfer the load from the mast clutch to the cabin top clutch, but at that point the mast is already rotated where we want it, and again that's a temporary situation. Hope this makes sense!

@@SailingTipsCa yes well explained and thank you, I'm building a trimaran atm so I'm really looking at details

@@adrianbaker9804 Good luck and kudos - it’s a lot of hard work!!!

It’s definitely an F-82R which is an 8.2 metre 26.9’ plan-built trimaran which is similar to the F-25C. The F-28R is a production boat built by Corsair and is both longer and heavier but with less floatation.

Do you mean when you're trying to roll it fore and aft - the weight of the forestay/furler pulls it over?

@@SailingTipsCa Yes, it is a big bundle to lash to the mast all the way up and especially with a Tides track makes it side-to-side top heavy.

@@brucewacker2471 I wonder if a nice deep carpeted bunk on the forward crossbeam might help? I cut my bunks out of 2x8 dimensional lumber and the base sandwiches the crossbeam. The mast cutout profile is about 4”/10cm deep and matches the mast perfectly which keeps the mast from falling over, so I can let go completely and it just stays put. And maybe make some kind of hooks that loop under the diamond wires, over the mast, and hold the forestay/furler. Anybody else out there with a C-31-sized boat have any suggestions?

@@SailingTipsCa Good ideas. I'd also probably have to remake the aft roller to match the new mast profile and make room for the spreaders to roll past.

My mast is 11.6m, 21x10cm aluminum, 2.3mm wall thickness. It's from an old D-class catamaran and pretty beefy. I don't have an accurate weight but I'm estimating about 70kg. The gin pole is about 3m long. There's a decent amount of tension on the raising line, but still not to difficult to raise with a Harken 40 cabin-top winch in low gear, I can turn the handle with one hand. I switch to high gear about 2/3 the way up. Let me know if you have any other questions!!!

In addition to the mast raising wires, we use a jib halyard on one side and spin halyard on the other side for extra adjustable support, both attached to the pivot point. I like to raise the mast a foot off the roller, see which side it tends to swing to, then tighten the halyard on the opposite side. Does this help?

@@SailingTipsCa yes thank you much!

Glad you like it! The crossbeams were custom fabricated. The mast rests on the two crossbeams and the aft roller, and the bowsprit is simply lashed to the mast to keep it in place while trailering. Let me know if you have any other questions!

@@SailingTipsCa I'm going to copy you on the synthetic shrouds at the amas - how much of your rigging is synthetic vs wire rope? Also, do you plan to replace more of the stainless with synthetic in the future?

@@vonderlust We currently have synthetic main shrouds and a stainless wire forestay because the jib hanks slide better on stainless, it chafes less, plus the stainless wire is thinner so more aerodynamically efficient. Given all this the current plan is to keep the synthetic main shrouds and wire forestay. I’ve sailed on a few boats with synthetic forestays and hank on jibs don’t drop as nicely but it’s really a minor issue.

No the mast is 38' long and the forward section of the mast is cantilevered about 11' in front of the forward beam, but this is also the strongest part of the mast having the diamond wires and all. The beam cradles are about 12' apart, and the roller is about 6' aft of the beam, which leaves about 9' of the lightest part of the mast cantilevered off the back. It's a fairly robust aluminium wing section and no problems with this setup to date.

I don’t quite understand the question - can you elaborate?

Yes we’ve motored from the ramp to nearby docks and back with the boat folded and the mast down. We only do that in settled weather without much sea state e.g. waves smaller than 18”.

@@SailingTipsCa I'm obsessed with completing The Great Loop. I think a trimaran like the Corsair 880 would be a versatile boat to navigate the 6000 mile circumnavigation. Any thoughts?

@@The442nd The Corsair 880 has a CE Rating of B for use up to 200NM from shore, so I think it should be just fine for The Great Loop (assuming this is what you mean en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Loop) as long as you watch your weather windows for the coastal legs. I understand the bridges on this route should be 55’ or higher, so the 880 should fit with the mast up (edit: at least for the ICW component).

@@SailingTipsCa Yes sir! aside from the cost, one of my wife's objections is the price and smell of fuel. I intend to win her over with an electric outboard and solar panels. I know we'll be moving at a snail's pace, but that's fine with us. 20 to 35 miles a day would be ideal. Thank you for responding

@@The442nd That sounds like an adventure! Maybe you can charge along the way too. I have an electric car which I love but don’t have much experience with electric outboards. What I do know is that those with integral batteries have limited range, so it’s probably best to get something with larger separate batteries in the hull for the 880.