Assembling the mast foot

Wharram uses a foot on the bottom of the mast and cleats on the cross beam to easily locate and establishes the rake of the mast. The mast foot also holds the cleats for the jib and main halyards as well as the mains'l downhaul.

The Hitia 17 uses two layers of 1/2" plywood for the foot, here the is the outline for one half drawn out on the plywood. You can see that the top of the cross beam is doubled where the mast steps and that a rounded block is added to the aft face which allows you to hook and then rotate the mast into place.

Here it is cut out including shaping the opening where the down-haul line runs down through the foot and back up to gain more purchase when tensioning the luff of the sail.

Next the two halves are epoxied together and clamped while keeping all the edges aligned.

Extra epoxy and wood flour mix is spread around the down-haul hole to make sure that the plywood is protected from any abrasion.

Once it dries it will be ready to glue between the two mast halves during final mast assembly.