You may recall that last season whilst cruising between Cartagena and Torrevieja http://www.sailblogs.com/member/distantdrummer/398035 our telescopic whisker pole decided to retract of its own accord ;-(.

After taking a closer look we established that the buttons which hold the pole in the various extended positions had perished because of UV degredation. An easy fix once we had the relevant spares but for the season we improvised with a wooden spoon from the galley, some plastic hose and a bit of shock cord.

Once in our winter destination, a short email to our trusted Selden agent Pete from Just Boat LDA in Portugal https://www.facebook.com/just.boats.portugal/ and he identified the necessary parts. A few emails and a little while later we received the necessary parts by post.



Like most jobs, the easier it appears usually means the more time consuming and annoying it is. This was no exception!

At first glance the replacement parts looked fine but on closer inspection it was apparent that the nylon buttons were marginally shorter in length.


old & new buttons and the new & newly fabricated longer and stronger spring

On the face of it this shouldn't be a problem but when the two buttons are placed back to back with the original spring the total distance between the components was more than 15mm different to the original...urgh! A quick internet search confirmed we had the correct parts and no others options were available. We can only assume things have changed since the original production of our whisker pole back in the 1990's. Whilst the buttons were of the correct diameter and the buttons protruded the right distance, what we needed was a replacement spring that was 20mm longer and ideally slightly stronger than the one provided.

Sourcing springs is challenging at the best of times but sourcing one in stainless steel even more so. As luck would have it we had arranged to visit our local stainless steel fabricator Andrea from O.R.CA di Andrea Biagini https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=https://www.facebook.com/ORCA-di-Andrea-Biagini-1601054560140159/&prev=search for a small item when on his display board we spotted a lone spring. We couldn't quite believe that we had stumbled across a fabricator that could make stainless steel springs to order. We left the fabricator at around 6:30pm....and by 7:30pm the same evening we had a picture of our new spring on Whats-App from Andrea. Truly fantastic service and for just €10.

At 10:00am the next day armed with the new spring we set to work reconstructing the whisker pole.









Job done :-)

Thanks Pete and thanks Andrea for all your help in sorting this little problem out.

For information the part numbers were as follows:

SELD 308-111 Locking Knob 22 x 37.5 Acetal
SELD 308-014 Spring 1.3/DY 14.5/50 ST
SELD 167-002 Pop Rivet LD870 (6.4 x 17.8) MNL