Coax cable stuck inside mast of P41

[Guilherme Salgado]

Hi folks,

On my P41 (keel stepped mast) the VHF coax cable going to the masthead enters the mast on the port side (through a hole I can't see as there's no access to that side of the mast down below), together with two cables for lights and one for the wind instrument. The coax and the wind instrument one exit through a hole on the top of the mast. 

Today I tried to remove both the coax and wind instrument cables, but it was not possible. It took an insane amount of effort to pull the coax from the top (I managed about 2m) and then it got completely stuck. The other one would not budge. When I tried from down below the coax snapped on a point that was not bent and wasn't where I was applying force -- yeah, the cable was in bad shape but I had to pull really hard before it snapped.

I'm trying to figure out how they might be getting stuck. I can see one tube on the aft end of the mast but using an endoscopic camera it seems to me that only two cables are going into that tube (and they look like the ones for the lights). Does anybody know if that's usually the case on P41s? If so, is there another tube on the fwd end of the mast as well? I can't point the camera there to see, unfortunately.

Also, has anybody experienced something similar and figured out a way to remove the cable without unstepping the mast?

Any suggestions are welcome as well, as at this point I'm out of ideas

Cheers

[paw...@gmail.com]

I'd say pull the smaller cables first. I'd also say that conduits of an older age where not intended to carry big wires or so many, probably needs to be upsized. Low loss coaxial is pretty thick, until such time you can get the mast down, could you get by with higher loss cable.