Huh while pulling off old Anchore light I discoverd no mast cap
is this normal
I wonder if I pull off the mast base plate if I will find 6 inches of seagull poop
I've got some 1/2 inch thick PVC sheet that I can shape to fit and screw in
Any better suggestions
Jeff
Jef,
A year after we got our Mac the mast cap dried out in the scortching sun of our part of the world and would probably have had the same fate as yours - it would have cracked and flown off - had I not lowered the mast for a regular inspection (Our mast stays up most of the time). I was fortunate in that I did not have to make a new cap; I took the old cap and applied a couple of layers of fibre glass and made it better than new.
My only comment with a new cap is that it should curl over and around the edge of the mast - as the stock cap does - so as not to allow water to go down the inside of the mast.
The inside of the mast is filled with foam for flotation and I can only guess that water running down the mast on a regular basis will not help to preserve the foam.
The factory mast on our 02 X had no cap. We had a sparrow make a nest presumably inside at the top and then proceed to fall down the mast. She must have slid down as we were leaving the marina because while trying to sleep on a trip we were kept up by flaping and scratching inside the mast. A few months later the wind on the highway through the mast pushed the nest to the open end and there was a well preserved bird wedged there when we got home.
Judging by is nesting habits in a temperate zone and location of my X still moored at its dock I must concur it was African. Thank god. Otherwise with the air speed velocity of over 43 wingbeats a second I surely would have ended up scouring the English Midlands in the land of Mercia for the remnants of my Mac amongst a field of coconuts
capncarp on this page made some fantastic aluminum mast caps for the X. I put one on ours the second year we had our X as we were having bird problems. Send him a PM to see if he still has them for sale.