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So coming home last night, high tide bridge level 36 ft. power boat exceeding 5 mph cuts me off going under the bridge. I have to adjust our course and end up hitting the light in the center of the bridge knocking the Windex off into the cockpit. It looks like it tore some fiber glass off when it ripped it off. How hard is it going to be to reinstall the windex.

Fortunately it's easy to lower the mast so you can work on it at ground level rather than up at the top tied off with a rope. You won't know the extent of the damage without lowering the mast, but if just the windex was involved, it's unlike that the repair would be too complicated, you may have to attach it in a different location.

I use pieces of a cassette tape on the shrouds.

Just out of curiosity...how does your windex work on the with the rotating mast?

36' bridge...that is cutting it rather close. But then again I have done two different 37' bridges.

Cheers,
Jim

Jim, I have a windex on mine and it works fine providing you are not talking about the electronic type. I think I would have aborted going thru a 36' bridge a little too close for my comfort .....if a wake would have come and pushed you up into it....Ouch!!

What fiberglass? Don't you have an aluminum mast? Where's the torn fiberglass coming from?

If the windex broke, you could easily repair it with Marine Tex. Ours broke too during transportation now it works as good as new.

i have a picture to show the bridge if I could figure out how to post one here. as for the fiberglass seems that's what the windex mount was bolted to I will take a picture next time I am at the boat.

Last two times we went sailing it was high tide, we have to sail under a bridge or go into the ocean when the admiral is aboard its under the bridge

BTW I would never climb a mast, fell out of a tree as a kid one fall is enough .

Some kind of bird, - gull, etc. - must have sat on mine, and broke the red plastic blade off, leaving the metal rod. I think I like the cassette tape strands or yarn-on-the-shrouds ideas better. Nothing a windix can do that your ears and a GPS can't. Puffs of wind that are at 35 feet altitude are not as important as those at the widest part of your sails. GPS plotting can tell you more about headway made good than the windix can. Anyway, the ones I have seen are criminally overpriced, for what they are - basically no better than those pinwheels you put in your yard to keep the pink flamingoes company.

ALX357 wrote: I think I like the cassette tape strands or yarn-on-the-shrouds ideas better.

Cassette tape doesn't absorb moisture like yarn.

Our Mac's usually hove-to in a steady rain. They dry out quick in any kind of breeze, once it stops raining. That's my yarn and I'm sticking to it.

hey ALX. Your avitar is driving me crazy. What the Sam Hill is it? Looks like a weasel going for a swim, or about a million other things.

The mast cap on the Mac26m is made of very thin fiberglass & is riveted on at least mine was before I removed it for my Alum. swivel mast cap
I use the windex 1 red 1 green that clip right on the shroulds about 7ft up no need to stretch the neck continuoisly looking up at the mast head !

J

A Windex will work fine on a rotating mast, just don't bother with the little "ears" that are supposed to indicate optimum angle when going to windward. Our boat came with a masthead Windex as a dealer option, but since installing our bimini, about the only time I ever see the masthead is from the dock when the boat is in the slip.

While I acknowledge that both yarn and cassette tape [a collector's item?] cost less, I am also a big fan of the little Wind-tels that clip onto the shrouds. Both of mine are now green, as every time I've dropped a the red one, it has refused to float

craiglaforce wrote:hey ALX. Your avitar is driving me crazy. What the Sam Hill is it? Looks like a weasel going for a swim, or about a million other things.

I get that alot. 'Has Rorschach properties, evidently, as everyone seems to have ideas, but not that they would write down usually. I like the swimming weasel idea, by the way. It is actually not of anything really, ( except you could say an ashtray ) .... an Experimental Diffraction Shadowgram is the best short explanatory name I have come up with. I will PM anyone who wants more details a complete description. Other than that, it is really just what you see in it.



THis is off topic from the thread, so maybe if it is wanted elsewhere, the details could be posted in the back room ?

It kind of reminded me of the Rorshock Test some of my colleges used to administer. I think it looks like a bat, as in winged mammal. Interesting none the less.

Allan