It needs to be secured against the inside of the mast or it will slap and could cause fouling with halyards etc.

It is usually done by drilling holes at regular intervals (say 1 metre apart), inserting a loop of seizing wire, capturing the conduit in the loop, pulling it tight then securing the wire with a pop rivet.

It is a fiddley job. Have fun.

MichaelR said...
Drill your hole through the mast and into the conduit, then pop a rivet in.

That is one way of doing it but a little rough and nasty. Doing it that way you need to use soft and easy pull rivets that do not pull through the plastic conduit.

Further, if you have run the wires through the conduit before securing, you run the risk of the drill bit damaging the wire and /or insulation.

If you have not run the wires before securing the conduit, you run the risk of gouging the insulation off the wire on the rivet mandrills as you pull it through.

When pulling wires through conduit, do what the professional sparkys do. Use plenty of silicon lubricant.

Some modern mast extrusions have an electrical conduit in them but they come at a price and are rare for the smaller sizes.

As there is no legal requirement (to my knowledge) to have tri lights or all round lights atop a yacht mast, you need to consider if you really want that stuff up there. It is just things of minor importance that will fail at some point for which you have to risk your life going up the mast to fix.

For a cruising yacht I would not take any wiring past the first spreaders. Just below the spreaders you can mount port and starboard lights and deck lights on the underside of the spreaders. A metre and a half above the spreaders you can mount your "masthead" steaming light. All good legal compliance with that set up.

An all round anchor light can be run up on a flag halliard or a couple of metres above deck on the backstay. Low drain L.E.D. bulbs are perfect.

If you really want to be pedantic and say "I want a wind indicator!!", put a windex and/or a Tacktic wireless sensor on the top of the mast while you have it down.

Having power and data cables that run to the top of your mast is a nice thing as long as they are top quality and fitted correctly so that maintenance is minimal.

It is a prick of a job to get it right and worth it if you are keeping the yacht long term (20 years) but it is a hidden value that most buyers do not see or take for granted.

As always with all things yachting stick to the KISS principle.

Keep It Simple Sailor.

All good points Cisco. I have been running around with no lights on the mast at all for a while now and I haven't really missed them (my nav lights are mounted on the bow). I would never really be motoring at night so haven't missed the steaming light which only really leaves the masthead anchor light and nobody seems too fussed about them.
You have hit on the other half of my cunning plan however - I was thinkning of installing a wind indicator. I like the wireless feature of the Tacktic but they are a bit more $$.