Topping Lift Cam Cleat

Astraea always needs some improvements and because we have the boat close to home this year its been easier to accomplish them.  We started with a new cam cleat on the mast for the topping lift.  This isn’t the topping lift that lifts the boom, but the line that lifts the spinnaker pole or whisker pole on the bow. I had some extra Sapele (a tropical hardwood less expensive than teak) that I shaped and coated with Cetol to fit a larger Harken cleat (in case I wanted to upgrade to that – which has the same hole pattern), but used a recycled Shaefer cleat off some old hardware we had.  The tricky part was curving the back of the block to fit the mast and tapping the mast.  I hadn’t tapped anything before and I was nervous about putting holes in our mast.  It turned out to be quite easy and the whole process went smoothly. As you can see from the picture the old way to secure the topping lift was the classic cleat below and this wasn’t very speedy when you are wrestling with a spinnaker on the bow.  Now I can just tug the line into the cleat to set it.

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