A free-standing spar is engineered around fatigue rather than strength, and that changes what maintenance means. Nothing holds this mast up but the mast. Hinterhoeller’s own schedule is below, filtered to a 1986 Nonsuch 30 — which spares you three sections that apply only to earlier boats.
No hardware is to be added and no holes drilled into the spar — especially at deck level or for several feet above it. A drilled hole can leave a jagged edge, and that edge is a stress riser from which a crack will propagate. If you want to add anything to the mast, or alter any structural component, the factory says contact them first; they accept no responsibility for damage arising from unauthorised alterations. On a boat this age that means talking to the association or a rigger who knows unstayed spars, before you fit that radar bracket.
Hinterhoeller explicitly recommends against storing the spar stepped over winter. Unstep it at the end of the season so it can be examined properly for loose fittings, rivets and defects — the kind of thing that is easy and cheap to repair when caught early, and neither of those once a crack has run. This is not over-caution: a Nonsuch has been dismasted by corrosion at deck level, and the owners’ verdict afterwards was that everyone should pull their rig annually. See check 2.
The factory notes cover several vintages at once and much of the text describes fixes for earlier boats. Here is the sorting, so you are not chasing problems that were solved before your hull was laid up.
| Item | Your 1986 30 | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mast step — lag bolts and retaining bolts | APPLIES | All vintages. The single most frequent check on the list. |
| Deck collar tie-down pin | DOESN’T APPLY | The pin through collar and mast was fitted to 26s and 30s built before spring 1984; the factory wanted dealers to fit a new tie-down system before re-stepping those boats. Yours is past it — confirm once, then forget. The collar area still matters enormously; see check 2. |
| Mast collar wedges | APPLIES | All vintages, and the item most often neglected because it looks like trim. |
| Spar joint — riveted | DOESN’T APPLY | First method, early 30s only. The factory calls it “not totally satisfactory” and says to update it. |
| Spar joint — internal straps and hex screws | DOESN’T APPLY | Second method, through the 1983 model. Prone to loosening despite Loctite. |
| Spar joint — through-bolted barrel nuts and studs | APPLIES | Third and current method, and what a 1986 hull has. Two through-bolts on a 30, penetrating the spar diagonally. The least likely to loosen — still checked annually. |
| Sail track rivets and screws | APPLIES | All vintages. Your joint area should already use No. 10 machine screws rather than the rivets that gave trouble on earlier boats. |
| Topping lift wire, swages and shackles | APPLIES | All vintages, and the item the factory calls imperative. |
| Topping lift safety jumper | SHOULD BE FITTED | Installed from the 1984 model onward, so yours should have one. If it is missing, the factory gives the retrofit — see check 6. |
Annually at minimum. Semi-annually if the boat sails year round. Open one to get the procedure, the parts, and the failure it is meant to catch.
Worth knowing before you need it, and worth saying clearly: no owner on the Nonsuch groups reports having been stuck. The usual complaint about these boats is the opposite — that the sail drops almost too fast into the cradle lines. But the consequences are poor enough to be worth five minutes of reading.
Every standard fix for a jammed slide assumes you can reach the sail. On a sloop you shin up the spreaders and work the slides down by hand — that is the textbook answer. A Nonsuch has no shrouds, no spreaders and nothing to climb. Going aloft means a bosun’s chair on a spare halyard, and plenty of these boats have exactly one halyard: the one attached to the sail that will not move. This is why the factory’s own offshore upgrade list includes an extra halyard sheave and halyard. On an unstayed rig that is not a convenience item, it is your only route up the mast.
The first three cost nothing and are worth trying before anyone leaves a seat.
A low-friction luff track is the most common sail-handling retrofit on these boats and it is aimed squarely at this problem. An owner who fitted Tides Marine Strong Track to a Nonsuch 26 and then to a 30 describes releasing the halyard, an instant “whoosh”, and 540 square feet lying in the cradle lines faster than the blink of an eye. It also makes the hoist markedly easier, which is the other half of the same complaint. Worth asking the seller whether yours has one.
If yours already has one, find out how old it is. These tracks degrade in UV, and owners elsewhere report them splitting after roughly a decade in the sun — in one case failing at sea and leaving long shards of track looping out of the mast while the main was fought down. Manufacturers keep records and can supply an exact replacement length. It is a maintenance item on a clock, not a permanent fitting.
Most of this schedule is preventive, but three of these items announce themselves. Knowing the noise is worth as much as knowing the procedure.
| What you notice | What it probably is | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A loud thumping in the mast compartment | The four retaining bolts at the mast step have gone slack and the spar is moving in its step. | Named explicitly by the factory. Stop loading the rig, check the retaining bolts, Loctite and re-tighten them against the spar heel. |
| A sail slide jams part way up or down | A loose sail track rivet standing proud. | Find and replace the rivet. Left alone it can stop you hoisting or lowering — which on this boat is the only way to reduce sail. |
| Broken wire strands at the topping lift swage | Fatigue at the Nicopress sleeve, usually at the masthead where the wire flexes constantly. | Immediate attention. The wire is cut back and re-swaged by a rigger — the factory recommends two sleeves on the remake. |
| Bent or distorted shackles at the wishbone | The loading angle does not always line up with the shackle, so it works in bending as well as tension. | Replace immediately. The factory notes these are designed for the load but fatigue causes eventual failure. |
| Staining, pitting or white powder on the spar just below the deck collar | Salt trapped in the collar area attacking the aluminium. This is the failure that has actually dismasted a Nonsuch. | Do not defer it to next season. Rinse the area, get the spar out, and have someone who knows unstayed rigs look at the metal. |
| The top of the mast has rotated relative to the bottom | Spar joint fastenings loose — the upper section can turn and misalign the sail track. | Check and re-set the two through-bolts. This is the failure the joint check exists to prevent. |
Almost everything here lands at commissioning, when the spar is out and reachable. Two items want looking at more often than that.
The no-drilling rule. Owners had reported that later Nonsuch masts carry hardware on clamped stainless and aluminium bands rather than bolted-through fittings, and put it down to avoiding stress concentrations. That is now factory doctrine in writing, and stated more strongly than the forums put it: no holes, especially at deck level or several feet above.
The topping lift safety line. The rigging survey thread that mentioned a missing “wire preventer” was describing this. The factory calls it a safety jumper, fitted from the 1984 model, between the lower end of the wire pennant and the wishbone casting — and if the tackle or shackles fail it stops the wishbone falling more than a few inches. There is a specified retrofit for boats without one.
Cinch the tackle around the tube. The end of the topping lift adjustment tackle should not simply be made fast to the cleat on the boom — it should also be wrapped or cinched around the wishbone tube, in case the cleat itself lets go.
Wire the shackle pins. All threaded shackle pins in the topping lift system must be wired to prevent accidental release. Not seizing wire as good practice: as an instruction.
Loctite is doing two jobs. The factory uses it on every tapped fastening on the spar not only to lock threads but as an electrolysis isolator between stainless fastenings and the aluminium spar. So substituting a plain thread-locker, or leaving it off a fastening you have re-set, invites corrosion as well as loosening.