Step 2. Buy a stainless steel pole or tube of about 3 centimeters outer diameter and 2 millimeters or more wall thickness. This tube will be what supports the cabin roof. Its length is determined by taking the measure in your boat - from floor to ceiling. Do not forget to take away the floor board, of course. Take the length 10 centimetres longer than you actually need (see below). As an alternative for stainless steel, you could use regular steel pipe (gas-pipe), but it'll have to be thicker, with an outer diameter of about two inches. This is because regular steel is not as strong as stainless steel.

Step 3. Determine the location in the cabin ceiling, where the upper end of the support bar will be placed, underneath the centre of the mast. The precise location is not very critical, you've got a tolerance of maybe an inch in the for/aft direction, and half that in the athwart direction.

Step 4. Take the hardwood ceiling cover that you've dismantled in step 1. Determine the corresponding place on it with respect to the location, determined in step 3, and drill or saw a circular hole there. The pole should fit through this easily, but with no more play than, say, about five millimetres.

B. Reinforcing the ship's bottom

Step 5. The bottom of the boat, right where the support will be pressing on, is just in between the two keels. The load must be spread over a larger area to avoid unhealthy stresses on the hull. For that purpose, use a piece of wood (about 25 by 20 centimetres, thickness some 4 centrimetres). Saw off one side, the side that will point downward, into a V-shape, to match the shape of the bottom; it need not be done very precisely.

Step 6. Attach an additional support piece perpendicular to the V-shaped beam of step 5. This support piece will point backwards, to prevent the beam from toppling over under pressure. See the picture below, where both pieces of wood are in place.

Step 7. Buy a tin of epoxy-glue from your chandlery, the best quality they've got. Read the processing instructions carefully; also, it IS useful to try out how to work with epoxy - maybe you should join a few old bits of wood together, in order to make yourself familiar with the process. Do use plastic gloves!

Step 8. Having familiarized yourself with the material, join the V-shaped beam to the additional support piece, mentioned in step 6 (see picture). Use one metal screw, to hold the two pieces together when the epoxy is hardening out, and also to add further strength to the joint. But while screwing, do not push all epoxy out from between the two pieces of wood.

Step 9. We'll call this unit the ‘beam unit’. Once in place at the bottom of the boat, it should not be in the way of the floor board later on. Also, be aware of another practical problem: When in position, the beam unit prevents condensation water or spilled water to flow aft, toward the lowest point of the boat, where it can be conveniently pumped away. The elegant solution is to make space for a piece of plastic hose or pipe underneath the center of the beam, to allow bilge water to flow through. The picture below shows a small tube protruding from underneath the beam unit.

Step 10. Carefully clean the bottom around where the beam unit will be glued in. Use sanding paper as well. Then, fix the beam unit to the bottom using the epoxy glue. Avoid cold weather when doing this.

Place the beam unit just aft of the rim that holds the floor board. The front side of the beam unit should correspond with the aft side of the rim within, say, plus or minus a few millimetres. Allow the epoxy to settle overnight.

C. Fitting the mast support

Step 11. Make a small hardwood "cap" to fit the top of the support bar, once it is in place. This will divide the upward pressure more evenly into the ceiling of your Hurley’s cabin. To prevent the top from coming loose from the bar during installation, nail a peace of wood to the cap that will protrude into the hollow bar downward. Size of the cap: not critical, say about one inch more than the diameter of your support bar, and maybe a quarter of an inch or so thick.

Step 12. The big day! Take the following items with you: the mast support pole, the ceiling cover in which you made the hole, the "cap", the spanner you used to unbolt the nuts (step 1), a simple hobby saw (iron saw), a few pieces of wood or board, lubricating oil, a felt-tip pen and some sellotape. Why the additional plank, felt-tip, etc.? Carry on reading, please.

On board, carefully determine the length of the pole. The length should be such, that your cabin deck (cabin ceiling) will be lifted up by, to start with, one or two centimeters. How much exactly, must be determined in practice. Maybe you will have to saw off a bit more from the pole, or, in the opposite case, you make it "taller" again by adding some more thickness to the "cap".

How much you should want to raise the cabin roof by wedging in the mast support pole is a matter of judgment. Normally, the cabin roof yields under the pressure when sailing but is in reasonable shape if the boat is not under sail. In this case, make the length of the pole one centimetre more than you've measured. In other words, aim to raise the cabin roof one centrimetre. Don't worry too much - it is not that critical. Don't over-do it. The major point is that the cabin roof cannot give in anymore when under sail.

A word on how to neatly and perpendicularly saw off a round pole: mark the position on the pole with the felt-tip pen. Accurately wind the tape around the pole there. Now you have an accurate circle where to saw. Do not start sawing all through, because you will find that you canot follow the circle. Rather start and re-start sawing, around the circumference of the pole. In this way, you make a real perpendicularly sawn-off end. Why not try this with a spare piece of pole at home first? By the way: keep the saw-blade a bit oiled during use. Finally, file and sand-paper the rim of the lower end of the pole you just sawed off, because the lower end should be pushed in a sliding way into its place on top of the beam unit; therefore, it should be smooth-edged.

Remove your Hurley’s sails and boom. Lowering the mast is not necessary. Slacken the stays and shrouds to allow for lifting up the mast by the one or two centimeters mentioned. Then comes the big moment: put the mast support pole in place. For that purpose, first slide the ceiling cover (the one from step 1) over the pole, and put the cap on (the cap from step 12). Now push the pole, with cap on, upward, until it touches the ceiling directly underneath the mast. Fix the ceiling cover in a provisional way; finally tightening the bolts can be done later. The lower side of the pole will now not yet be where you want it, but, say, on the port side, somewhere near the sitting-bench. Manoeuvre the spare pieces of plank and board under the lower end of the pole, and start pushing it toward the center, in the direction of the beam unit. Slide it onto the beam unit.

If you cannot get it there manually: good, because that means you are really beginning to lift the resisting ceiling up. Improvise a lever with a plank, and keep trying to manoeuvre the lower end of the pole into its proper place. You may need someone to assist you with this. This phase may be one of trying and re-trying, at least it was in our case, but we managed. In case you do not succeed: then saw half a centimeter of the bottom of the pole, smoothen it again, and there comes your next try.

Step 13. Victory! The pole in place! It should be vertical in the cross-sectional (atwarth) plane of the boat (perhaps improvise a plumb-wire with things you have on board). However, you will notice that the top of the pole is leaning about two centimeters forward. It is a good idea to check this beforehand, it should not be more than that. This forward slant of two centimeters has presented no problem for us, after four years of use. However, if you want to avoid it, you have to remove a bit of glassfiber from the rim that holds the floor board.

Step 14. Fix the ceiling cover (the one from step 1). This will lock the mast support pole into position. Clearly it is important to ensure the pole cannot snap out of its 'under-pressure' position. The bolts and nuts are strong enough to prevent the top of the pole moving sideways.

You end the operation by securing the bottom-end of the pole, i.e. preventing it to move sideways from its location on the top of the beam unit. You do this by fixing two or three wood-screws into the top of the beam unit, such that the heads of the screws prevent the pole from moving in the horizontal plane.

You will want to put the floor board in place again, and find that the pole is in its way. So, you now carefully mark where you should make an indenture into the front side of the floor-board, to enable it to re-take its original position. Be sure to make the indenture as neatly as you can, because it remains permanently in sight. The beam unit, on the other hand is allowed to look messy, because it remains hidden underneath the floor board.

Installing a mast support - for fin keelers

If you have a fin keeler rather than a bilge keeler, the job is much simpler. There is no need for the beam unit, so you can skip steps 5 to 10. Instead of using the beam unit to spread out the mast support's pressure more evenly, a hardwood wedge is used. This should be something like 20 centimetres long and 4 centimetres wide, and glued to the bottom lengthwise. Its slope takes 20 centimeters (or so, not critical). The thicker end is about 3 centometers thick, and the thin end about one. The thicker end will be pointing aft.

Determine the length of the pole as described in step 12.

Put the pole in place, similarly as described above (step 13). First slide the ceiling cover (the one from step 1) over the pole, and put the cap on (the one from step 11). Again, push the pole, with cap on, upward, until it touches the ceiling. Fix the ceiling cover’s nuts provisionally. The lower side of the pole will not yet be where you want it, but more astern.

Bring the wedge in position, the same location as the bilge-keel’s beam unit. The wedge in the fore-aft direction, with the thicker end towards the stern. Position the lower end of the beam where you want it to be. That’s still easy, because only the thinner end of your wedge is underneath it. Now start pushing (you may hammer, but carefully) the thick end of the wedge forward. The pole will want to move forward too, but it cannot, because it is being stopped by the rim of the floor-board support. Push the wedge further. The pole has no choice than to move up, which is exactly what you want. This is a simpler procedure than with the bilge-keel version’s step 12. Finish, by fixing the wedge in its correct position onto the bottom of the boat, by means of epoxy.

Wrapping up

For either bilge or fin keelers: after the pole is in place, carefully re-tension the shrouds and the stays. Do it step-by step, gradually tightening all the tensioners - not one tensioner all the way. The shrouds that come straight from the top of the mast should be a bit slacker than the shrouds from the spreader. Adjust the tension of the baby-stay to keep the middle of the mast straight in te forward/aft direction. Generally: do not over-stress the stays and shrouds, as some people tend to do.

If you had leaks into the cabin before, this can now be easily solved. Re-fill the deck-to-hull connection from underneath with a suitable putty. Ask your chandler what kind of. Do it all-around the boat, with the emphasis on the front half of the boat. You even do not have to do this very neatly, because the putty is out of sight, unless you swim around your Hurley and look up.

Good luck!

Alex Vermeulen - pvermeulen@zonnet.nl

Disclaimer: the above is simply a description of what we did to solve our problems with a sagging cabin roof. Although care was taken in writing up the procedure, we cannot be held responsible in any way for following the described process. Do note that the mast support pole is under permanent pressure. When under sail, that pressure increases. Ensuring that the pole cannot snap out from its fixed position is important.