HI Marty,

     Tell me your troubles with your forward mast case.  That is the part of the boat that has caused us trouble twice in our 50,000 miles of sailing but the good news is that no other part of the boat has given us trouble.  These are easy fixes I will tell you about and one is not likely to be needed right away. 

     It looks like you  bought a Tiki 46 and did a fantastic restoration job and now have a beautiful boat.  Did I read right?  If you have them, I would adore to have pics of the inside and also details of the problem with the forward mast case problem now.

     I think you will be up and sailing again pronto with the fix-it job I give you now. 

     All the best,  Ann

Hi Ann,

My problem is a small one I think and we are half way to resolving it. I will try to post a pic to this thread .
So the small cracking is at the join of the mast case to the cheeks of the bowsprit where the mast box is joined to the bowsprit plank. There are two vertical cracks at the join of the box section and the inner anchor roller cheeks. I think it is caused by the bowsprit flexing and the box section not flexing thus putting all of the stress on an epoxy joint. The joint is heavily glassed but I think the lever arm is too much once the bridle lashings stretch. Looking at it in my problem solving mode, that whole area is where the outer bowsprit attaches to the mast box and it looks obvious that its a week point due to a stiff section joining a flexible section.
Our remedy is to glue and bolt a 1.3m long hard wood plank that is 50mm thick and the width of the bowsprit plank. It is going to run from the mast to forward of the anchor rollers. There will be 8 bolts, 4 forward and 4 astern of the problem area. I will then glass the new plank for weather protection...That should stop the flexing of the bowsprit at the critical area. Basically I think the epoxy join is just not flexible enough to withstand the very slight flexing of the outer bowsprit as it is at exactly at the pivot point of the rigid mast case and the flexible bowsprit.
I wish I had seen the threads where you describe your issues before now but I was busy building and not reading. My plan is No 19 and there isn't a big doubler shown on the plan and I built it exactly to the plan that I have. It never occurred to me there may have been a revision. The original builder launched in sept 2001 I think so she must have been one of the first tiki 46's to get wet... Oh well my first on water repair!!
The only other issues so far have been a very creaky lashing on my port aft beam No5...Of course this happens to be my cabin and it sounds horrendous.... But that is the next job after the bowsprit. And some very minor cracking on the stern ramp and again is caused by the ramp twisting and flexing more than the epoxy joints can handle... This doesn't worry me at all.....

Other than this the boat is fantastic and I am super happy... Top speed so far is 14 kts and she just purrs along at 10 knots straight downwind with only the spinnaker in 25 true/15 kts apparent, What I am seeing is that boat speed is around 50-70 % of apparent downwind and around 30-40% of apparent when beating, but we have had relatively light winds whilst going upwind and have been taking it easy since seeing the cracking.

We have currently covered around 1000 miles from st Francis bay in South Africa and we are now in luderitz Namibia and as soon as we are ready we are heading to st Helena and then brazil... I can't wait for warm weather and we have been ticking off the degrees as we head north.

I will of course be adding lots of pictures but I just haven't had time lately to get online and post due to the unavailability of a reliable Internet connection and the pressures / stress of dodging the bad weather whilst getting out of South Africa... It's been a great experience in South Africa but as any sailor will tell you this part of the world can be punishing if you get caught out... Only a few days ago they were reporting 50-60 knts in Cape Town, boy am I glad to be 500-600 miles north and getting into the trades...

Thanks for your quick reply and I appreciate any advice you can give....

Cheers

Marty

You have already done just right.  The thick plank running from the mast to forward of the rollers for the anchrs will solve the problem nicely, I am sure.  Nev and I discovered our similar cracks in exactly the same place and we were in urgent need to cross Biscay on our maiden sail ahead of an insurance deadline (stupid insurance companies!).  Nev had to do a "temporary fix" right away but it worked so well, it is still there and has merely been improved by use of stainless rather than mild steel.  It works and Hanneke and James have seen it and approved it so that is all that matters - be safe and keep sailing - in my book.  What you have done looks better though.  And we will do the same one day.  The newer plans have the second plank under the long plank and that looks even better but I think your way works best because:

   The added benefit for what you have done is that the mast cannot "walk"  forward over that blockading secondary plank of wood you have in front of the mast.   During our maiden voyage on the way to Madiera during our trans Atlantic, I noticed that the shrouds had suddenly gone relaxed and the dead eyes were kind of dancing around in a heavy sea way.  Nev thought the lanyards were stretching as had happened earlier and so he and our friend (with us because of insurance requirements) started to tighten them up.  But I went to examie everything connected to the mast and found that the base of the mast had walked forward.  So the guys got out a small 5 ton hydraulic jack and pushed the mast back into place at the bottom using the bollard for the bottom of the jack and the mast for the top.  This was maybe rude, but it was also effective.  Then the  guys got that rough piece of teak I had pulled out of a dumpster and they screwed it to the plank.  When we arrived in Madiera, a nice man took our lines and complimented us on the pretty new Wharram and offered us free chunks of hardwood from the carpentry shop next door to his house.  WE shaped one up and Nev bolted it in place.  Then we all looked at the main mast and did the same to it.  I believe the plans now have better mast base design so that is not a problem any more.    I believe Hanneke has written to the first builders to tell them of the change.  So just put a block in front of the main mast and yu can bolt it through the pod mast case as we did.  Works fine.  We wrote in about this so the info is somewhere here on the web.  Our chunks of teak are about 4 inches  by 4 inches by 6 inches and have four long through bolts with large washers.  The rest of our voyage went uneventually with only Nev and me aboard.  The main lesson learned is to keep looking around your boat as you sail and when something looks wrong, look all around for the cause and do not just assume your first guess is correct.   

     New production boats and newly launched home built boats, both need to be made more cooperative by their first owners.  We call this process "taming the wild cat" and probably we should write a complete discussion about this as we experienced it on Peace IV during our 50,000 miles at sea.  We had a lot of stuff that was quick and easy to do and made the boat LOTS easier to handle.  Because we are old folks, and still sail offshore, we just had to do something to make things easier for ourselves.  Kind of geriactric sailing modifications!  WE are still out there and the boat is still wonderful and you will be doing something like this with your new boat.  Never get discouraged because these boats are truly worth it and I have had very well though of production boats in the past and know that there are problems with them also.  I had a Shannon monohull and they are like the best possible kind of monohull and that boat also had problems.  I put 25,000 on her including a solo trans Atlantic but by the time I sailed her across the ocean, she was much better behaved.  And on the return trip, Nev was aboard and he did a whole lot more.  Boat