On Mar 23, 2018, 11:19 AM -0700, Mike Barnett via montgomery_boats <montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com>, wrote:
My fiance and I recently acquired a 1976 M-17 - she's rough, and her sails are old (jibs are the original Reggie Armstrongs, the main is a non M-17 mutt that happens to fit), but she came to us, on a trailer, for a 3 figure price, so we'd have been nuts to say no! I'm pretty sure I'm going to order a double reef main from Precision, though I haven't decided yet on white vs colored sailcloth. We'll be doing quite a bit of cosmetic work on her to bring her up to a reasonable look for a lady of her age, but she seems solid, except for a glaring crack in the deck from the mast step to the forward hatch. It was a mystery to me until I realized the previous owner had either raised or lowered the mast with the stays at full tension. The bottom aft end of the mast isn't radiused (yet), so instead of simply pivoting aft, it jacked up about 1.5" and put enough pressure on the deck to flex and crack it. I'll be checking the compression post for damage when I take the mast step off to repair the deck.
There's been some contention about radiusing the mast. My claim is that, even if the bottom of the mast were dead square, the stretching in the shrouds (I assume you mean shrouds) would be only a couple hundredths of an inch. I'd take Jerry's advice and look at the deck supports. I finally got around to wondering why radiusing the mast makes raising it easier--in case I'm not the only one who didn't see it. It's because the sole of the mast has to slide backward on the base of the tabernacle for the last 20 degrees or so, with the shrouds under tension. So I tried waxing it, which helps, and will look into cleaning up the somewhat rough and scarred surfaces.