Bow pole tube with carbon chainplate

At first I considered making the carbon bow pole myself, partly as an exercise for the future construction of a carbon mast and boom. For practical reasons, however, I decided to buy a custom-made bow pole. This saved time and also offered a valuable look into the working methods of a professional carbon mast builder.

The carbon bow pole was made by Thomas Wilkes of Ceilidh Composite Technologies (www.carbonmasts.com). He was kind enough to discuss several aspects of carbon mast construction with me and to exchange ideas about building such components myself in the future.

The bow pole tube itself, together with the integral carbon forestay chainplate, was made in-house. This turned out to be a demanding job due to the confined space in the bow and the critical alignment between bow pole, forestay chainplate, and the hull centreline.

The bow pole has been made in a female mould using carbon prepregs. The only remaining work on the pole itself is the fabrication of the attachment points for the screacher and spinnaker. The bow pole is retractable and slides through the bow pole tube.

To make the bow pole tube I initially thought I needed the actual bow pole as a mould. In hindsight this turned out not to be necessary, as the outside diameter of the bow pole is exactly the same as a standard 125 mm PVC drain pipe. Instead of using the carbon pole, I therefore used a PVC drain pipe as the mould for the bow pole tube.

With seven layers of wallpaper I increased the diameter to approximately 128 mm, allowing the bow pole to slide freely. The mould was finished with two layers of plastic film, with a Teflon coating between the films, to ensure the glassfibre bow pole tube could be released from the mould.

Mounting the completed bow pole tube and carbon chainplate proved to be a difficult job in a very hard-to-reach location. After careful consideration I had to conclude that an access hole in the bow was unavoidable. That hurts. To make matters worse, a second access hole followed. And a third .....

In the end, not much was left of the carefully shaped bow. After installing the equally awkward bow pole tube bulkhead, the bow was rebuilt and restored to its original shape and structural integrity.