New Mast, Re-Attaching Standing Rigging

[waterbug]

I have a replacement mast that is not stock but will work fine on my Sailstar Explorer, a Daysailer copy. I need to take all my rigging off of my old broken mast and put it on my new one. I'm plenty handy but have never done anything like this, and I'm very new to sailing to boot.

My questions are:

1) Should I use SS or aluminum rivets? I have scoured the forum, and the leaning seems to be for SS? If so I assume they must be stronger, but an un-like metals corrosion issue is present for which one needs to use an oxidation inhibitor? I saw a post about Fastenall being a good source, and Harbor Freight as a good possibility for a gun. I live on a well-equipped farm. I'll see if we have one already.

2) I read a good post about the options for making a mast buoyant, to keep it from going turtle and snapping again! I'm thinking that stuffing the mast with floaty noodles might be best, but any further input here would be great. The bungee and soda bottle idea is pretty good too, as well as general floats at the top of the mast, however unsightly they might be. Some of the other options discussed in the thread had too much jargon and only partly made sense to me.

3) Any other issues anyone can suggest or address I am not thinking of or don't know about because of my lack of sailing knpowledge?

Thank you~
Peter.

[willyhays]

Ahoy Peter,

If I predominantly sailed my boat in freshwater, I would use SS rivets and not worry at all about corrosion. But because I sail in saltwater I use SS rivets and apply a small amount of polyurethane sealant/adhesive to the the rivet before inserting it into the hole. This helps to isolate the dissimilar metals from one another. Whenever possible, after every sail in saltwater I thoroughly rinse off my boat, rigging, mast, hardware, sails, sheets, and equipment with freshwater ASAP. The difference between the corrosive effects of the salt and fresh are huge.

[GreenLake]

Tefgel is the goto material for galvanically isolating dissimilar metals.

If you use SS rivets, you may find that you need a rivet gun that packs a bit more oomph.

The original rigging appears to have all been done with aluminum, though. At least on my mast.

But those rivets weren't "hollow", that is, they had a captive mandrel that was flush; should help making the rivet a bit stronger in shear, but also sealing the mast.