Rebuilding a Forespar Whisker Pole

Kintala came with a whisker pole mounted to two brackets on the deck. It took us quite a while of sailing the boat before we dared try the pole and we almost dumped Tim into the drink trying it. We weren't impressed.

Along came a good friend of ours, Barry, who showed us how to use the pole. I'm embarrassed to say how easily he did it, and he's considerably lighter built than either Tim or I. We began, tentatively, to use the pole. After two years of using the pole while cruising, we weren't sure how we had ever sailed without it. We spend a considerable amount of time sailing on just the genoa, and an even greater percentage of that time sailing in light wind. If you try to do this without the pole, you end up slatting the genoa and greatly decreasing its lifespan.

Back a few months ago while we were heading down the east coast of Florida to Snead Island for this job, we put up the whisker pole with a new rigging design we had read about in an article. I doubt that it was the rigging design, but the inner tube of the pole bent and broke after we had it fully extended. We tied up the pieces and anchored them to the mounting bracket the best we could and added it to the summer project list.

Early in the summer, I contacted the wonderful tech support at Forespar. They were kind enough to tell me that it wasn't entirely our fault that it broke, since it was two (not one, yes two) sizes too small for our boat. Go figure. Unfortunately, a new pole properly sized for our boat was just under two grand. Definitely not in the summer budget.

We began to look on Craigslist and eBay. We did find one that was the right size, but the description included the fact that one end didn't come with it. That end would have set us back nearly $500 so, with the price of the pole, it was also out of our budget. After a while I started looking at the possibility of repairing ours. Yes, it was two sizes too small for our boat, but it had lasted us almost 5 years and who knows how long it was used before that. As long as we were careful about the load we put on it, it might be worth exploring. After a few days of research, we surprisingly found that West Marine had the pole precut in the proper length and at the best price. Who knew? I ordered one from the parts department here on sight and waited the three weeks for delivery. As a side note, Rig Rite does also have most of the parts, but we were able to get a better price through the boat yard here from West Marine.

It appears that Forespar doesn't really want you to rebuild your poles, though. Finding information on parts and reassembly was difficult at best. I did happen on the basic drawing on their tech support site that I used throughout the rebuild that you see below.  It's part of an interesting article about whisker poles so read it when you get a chance. After removing the pole ends, which were all riveted on, you end up with four basic pieces - the outer tube, the inner tube, the inboard end fitting with the attached stinger tube, and the outboard end fitting. There are also two bushings that enable the inner pole to slide in and out. Every rivet had to be drilled out, and every screw was completely corroded in place and had to be drilled out and retapped.

New control line and jaw control line

While I was waiting for the new inner tube, I removed the old control line and replaced it with a shiny new one. I also removed all the smaller lines on the outboard end that are used to pull open and lock the jaw as well as provide loops to hook guy lines. One of our sheaves was completely locked up from corrosion and had to be drilled out and replaced. Fortunately, we had one just the right size from a block that we removed from The Floating Bear fiasco. Score!

The broken 90° tube. You can see the missing outer nut
where it's supposed to be in the photo above

There is also a 90° bent piece of aluminum tubing that guides the short piece of line on the outboard end that pulls open the jaw. It has a threaded end on it that comes up through a hole in the side of the tube and then a nut screws down on it. The whisker pole is aluminum, that tube is aluminum, and the nuts are stainless. Can you say corrosion? The little tube cracked and the nut fell off. I was unable to find a replacement online so I called Forespar and they were able to get me one.

A new jaw control cable. You can also see the new sheave where the
control line exits the end fitting. Please ignore the dirty deck :(

The hardest part of the rebuild was figuring out how to reassemble the pieces. It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You have to slide the inner tube into the outer tube until it's completely inside, install the stop bushing on the end of the outer tube, slide the inner tube back through that bushing, and then put the end on the inner tube. I confess it took me two tries to get it right. Some of it I riveted, some other pieces lent themselves better to being assembled with screws and nuts.

After a sigh of relief that it actually worked the way it was supposed to, I strode confidently to the foredeck to mount it in the brackets. Ummmm...when you order the inner pole it comes pre-cut at nine feet four inches, the exact measurement that it's supposed to be for that model pole. Unfortunately, some previous owner cut two inches off the end of the pole so this pole won't fit. After looking at it with Tim, we realized that the aft bracket had been installed backwards and so, rather than remove the bracket, rebed it, and reinstall it, they decided just to cut two inches off the pole. Go figure.

The whole project took about three weeks including the waiting, but we  have our original pole restored for a little less than $250 instead of $2K. Yes, it's too small for Kintala, but cruising budgets sometimes demand some compromises and this is one of those for us.

1000 sailors a day …

… manage to put up a whisker pole without bending it in half. I would not be one of them.

The day started out pretty well. Instead of enduring 2 more days of ICW / opening bridges travel to get from Lake Worth to Ft. Lauderdale, we took advantage of a weather window to jump outside. One day. Only 2 bridges. No debate. Kintala scooted out the channel on the ebb tide, doing better than 7 knots. Once turning south there was enough wind to fill the jib, but not enough to give the WesterBeast a rest.

A couple of hours in we came upon a small gaggle of sport fishing boats spread out over a couple of square miles of ocean. There are several reasons to give sport fishing boats a lot of room. People who take a million dollars worth of equipment out and burn a couple of hundred gallons of fuel just to catch a few dollars worth of fish, look at the world in a way that is beyond me. I'm never sure what they are going to do. It also seems that sport fishers, so long as they have a line in the water, are considered “commercial fishers” and thus are the “stand to” boat. It doesn't matter if they are actually charter boats who make money by taking people out to catch fish that are never going to make it to market, or if they are just rich people out playing for a day. They will still act like “commercial fishers” and drive anywhere they like with little regard for anyone else in the area. They also drag hundreds of feet of line behind their boats, line that is impossible to see. And, as we experienced a few weeks ago in Stuart, when a fisher person has something on the line pretty much nothing else that might be going on in the universe matters to them because they are catching a fish!

So, when one of the gaggle appeared off our port bow, heading north to our south, I turned to starboard just to give him room. A minute later he turned to port, and started closing in on our track again. Okay then. I turned further to starboard, now getting really close to the wind and risking back winding the jib. It was enough though, we had plenty of room, except he turned toward us once more and was now closing rapidly. Not okay then. Maybe he had caught a fish and wasn't paying any attention to where his million dollar boat was going? In any case he had put us in a bit of a bind. Just before I turned again to let the sail do what it may, he fell off to turn parallel to us. He was close enough that I could see the captain holding a phone in one hand. With the other he was waving toward shore and shouting something that sounded like “Go away, go away.” Which, in hindsight, seems kind of funny. I was making every effort to "go away" as he tried to run us down.

At least, I think that is what he said. At that moment I was sharing my own view of the last few minutes, along the lines of, “Please gentle fisher man, would you consider putting down your phone and steering your boat in such a way as to keep us from crashing into each other?” (Okay, maybe not exactly along those lines.)

Anyway, if you happen to be a couple of miles off shore and a few miles south of Lake Worth, and happen to see a sport fishing boat named Great Day, you might consider giving it an extra wide pass. Its captain is apparently a bit of a wanker. If you happen to be a person who enjoys chartering a million dollars worth of equipment and burning a couple hundred gallons of fuel to catch a fish, maybe there are better places to patronize than Great Day Charters? Surely there are companies who employ captains who are much more professional.

About the time Great Day disappeared over the horizon the winds faded to the point where the jib started to flog. We have been working out some new rigging to make poling out the jib less dramatic. This looked like a good day to test it out, but the deck monkey failed the test and managed to trash the pole. The test that came next was getting the bent pole back on deck. While struggling to get that done, a pod of dolphins showed up. I think they were getting a laugh from the deck monkey antics on the good ship Kintala. But here is the thing about dolphins. Even when they are laughing at you they bring along some magic. Even better, Deb had sent a float plan to Daughter Middle. Daughter Middle sent a message back stating that Grand Kids 5 wanted dolphin videos. The dolphins, including at least a half dozen mother / baby pairs, might have heard them and so came by to make some kids smile, staying with us for hours. And yes, we got videos.

In spite of it all the day turned out to be a really good day. Thanks to the magic of dolphins.

ps: As it turns out the deck monkey made less of a mistake than originally thought. According to Forespar (who made our pole) the one we had was several sizes too light for a boat Kintala's size. It is a bit of a surprise that it lasted this long.