Contender Tuning Information

Carbon Contender Mast

Our carbon contender mast has been designed to offer the most ideal bend and strength characteristics required to suit the current fast sails. Our in-house CNC filament winding system enables the fibres to be wound onto the mandrel in precisely the right position. The Contender mast is manufactured on a profiled mandrel to give the sailor a ‘shaped’ mast. This offers the best properties in terms of stiffness ratios (masts need to be stiffer fore and aft compared to sideways to counter act the kicker & mainsheet loads) and aero-dynamic performance.

The Contender mast is manufactured from 100% carbon fibre, T700 aerospace grade tow. This means the spars have the best available stiffness properties for the lowest weight. The topmast is a separate tapered wound section, enabling a step down in size at the hounds. This means we are able to step down the inertia properties of the spar at the point where the compression loads change. There is the added advantage of the immediate reduction in windage as well.

88mm Carbon Contender Boom

Seldén are now offering their super stiff 88mm carbon boom section for the Contender Class, supplied including end fittings, eyes for mainsheet, with a webbing strop for the kicker available as an accessory.

Results

Why Seldén?

Choose a Seldén mast and you will find many performance enhancing features unique to our products, for example:

• The Seldén tapering system ensures that our tapers are minimum size and weight. This gives low windage, centre of gravity and topmast weight. This maximises your speed by enabling the topmast to react quickly to gusts and waves giving better acceleration, a smoother ride upwind and, ultimately, more races won!
• Automated welding keeps excess heat out of the taper for guaranteed consistency and performance. The weld produced is so perfect that there is no need to mechanically grind the weld (which can induce inconsistencies). This means that once we have finalised a winning design, you can be sure that your spar will perform identically to the champions.
• All masts are heat treated in our purpose-designed oven. This artificial hardening ensures that you get maximum performance from the high performance aluminium alloy.
• Our spars pass through a purpose-developed bead-peening machine. This gives the mast a perfect satin finish that dramatically improves fatigue properties, giving you a mast that will perform reliably for many years.
• Top quality fittings such as our fully adjustable spreader bracket and highly durable cast gooseneck ensure speed and reliability on the racecourse.

Sections Available

Mast Specification

The mast is supplied a standard with T-terminals for shrouds (T-wires ferrule to shrouds), spreaders, lower bracket, custom high load bracket for the kicker and tenon heel.

Boom Specification

Supplied including end fittings, eyes for mainsheet, with a webbing strop for the kicker available as an accessory.

Spinnaker Pole Specification

Rigging Specification

Includes shrouds, forestay and lowers, T-wires, complemented with a wire main halyard.

Tuning Tips