Rodd
Tie messenger lines to the terminals of the harness at the masthead, spreaders, and steaming light. As you pull the old mast harness out, you feed in the messengers. Once the harness is out, label the messengers and cut them free from the old harness. It can be very difficult to slide the new harness into the mast. The harness will snag on any fasteners the protrude into the mast. You’ll have to rotate the mast and experiment. If you have a supply of inexpensive wire, you might consider using it for the messengers since they will be less likely to snag and won’t break. The messenger wires need not be stainless since you will cut them off and discard them. Even copper wire would do. You can crimp them to the ends of the harness and cut them off later.
Buy a 50′ length of the smallest stainless cable that you can find. Bundle this with the rest of the harness and leave enough length for it to exit at the top of the mast. Tie-wraps will work fine for bundling the wire. Some folks leave the tails on so that the harness doesn’t slap-around in there. Once you pull the new harness into the mast, attach the steel cable to a machine screw at the top of the mast using a properly sized electrical terminal crimped to the cable. Make sure that you cut and crimp the cable so that it will take up the weight of the harness. If it is a little loose, the harness will stretch until the steel takes up the weight. You need a reliable crimp. I would suggest folding the wire over as you put it in the terminal. Paint the terminal to keep it from corroding. Without the steel wire, the harness will continue to stretch until some of the wires start breaking. It may take several years for problems to develop.
Don’t forget to seal the VHF antenna connection. I use self fusing electrical tape. This is the stuff that doesn’t have any adhesive on it. The plastic just sticks to itself. I then wrap this with coax-seal making sure that the second layer is longer. I then wrap the whole thing with regular electrical tape. The first layer keeps coax-seal from finding its way into the connector, but it doesn’t make a very water-tight seal. The coax seal keeps the water out, but degrades in sunlight. The electrical tape keeps sunlight off the coax-seal. I’ve never had a problem with antenna connections using this method. Radio Shack used to sell all three types of tape, but I don’t know if they still do.
I suggest putting in a second messenger into your mast. This would not be bundled with anything. This would be used if you need to run a new wire in your mast at some point in the future. Tie it off on the top of your mast somewhere. This might slap around in there, so use polyester fishing line or something similar.
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Rich Carter
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