Wedge ball mount in mast holder for rod holder?

Hi all,

I put a wedge-style RAM ball mount in the mast holder of a revo 13 and was trying it out for the first time yesterday. I used the ball mount to hold a rod holder.

I found that the torque on the rod holder while trolling turned the mast holder clockwise, tightening it further. After landing, I was seeing drops of water coming out of the bottom of the kayak in front of the mirage drive, which appeared to be coming from the mast mount area.

After hosing everything down and putting water inside the hull in the garage, I'm unable to reproduce the dribble. I'm going to leave it for a few hours and see if anything shows up, I'm a little worried about leaving and going out again even if it's not leaking right now.

Has anyone else seen leaks triggered by overtightening the mast tube? Is the mast tube generally not recommended for rod mounts? Or is it fine and I can just tighten it up until it can't spin any further? I see most of the posts here talk about that spot for a FF which will obviously see much less force. A sail would have a lot more force, but maybe not so much torque compared to a rod holder

I thought I was minimizing the chance of a leak by avoiding drilling extra holes in the hull to install a ball mount, but I was not so lucky

I’ve not seen that problem, but when converting a couple of Hobie Adventure kayaks to full AIs I had to remove that mast holder. It doesn’t surprise me that it would not hold up to a ram ball, as it’s fairly thin, and seems a bit brittle. The Hobie mast does not put that kind of point force on it.

It might not be obvious but the mast holder screws in (and therefore, out) of the kayak (well, at least it does on an Adventure/Revo 16, and I assume it’s the same on most Hobies). I would take it out and examine it carefully to make sure it is not cracked. It would not be too difficult to repair/reinforce. I have a couple of spares if you find it is seriously damaged and you need a new one.

Anyways, if you are going to put a ram ball in there, I’d suggest that at a minimum, you reinforce it with, say PVC pipe…

Thanks! I could see it was backing out as I turned it, but I didn't know what to expect if I kept going. With your advice, I uninstalled the mast mount and inspected everything. The piece is still in good shape as is the body of the kayak underneath. I'll need to think about the next steps though.

I can try to reinforce it better so it doesn't continue to rotate and tighten and damage the plastic threads in the kayak, but I might be better off just installing a rod holder on the gunwale like I've seen others do. I liked having the rod out in front of me without needing to hold it the whole time, but is pretty far forward and a bit of a reach to access that far forward anyway.

Still no leak reproduced so I'll tentatively leave it alone and see how it goes next time out.

Personally, I would not hesitate to install a rod holder on the gunwale, as I've done so (on both sides) on all of the Hobies that I've owned. Rectangular Scotty mounts require a fairly large hole in the center, and then 4 small holes for 1/4" bolts. If you are worried about the large hole, you could use Railblaza mounts, which only require the 4 smaller holes (no center hole at all).

Another possibility is installing mounts inside the mesh pockets. Scotty makes one that works well, but takes up a lot of space, while the Railblaza version is much smaller, leaving a lot more space in the pocket. I've also installed these on my Hobies, as my motto is "one can never have too many mounts".

If you do install any of these, I'd recommend installing a backing plate (1/4" starboard plastic works well) on each. Also, generally the plastic on one side of the Hobie is much thicker than on the other, and the backing plate is especially needed on the "thin" side (and double-especially inside the mesh pocket on the thin side), but still a good idea in all cases. If you don't want to use a backing plate, at a bare minimum, use large stainless fender washers on the inside (you'd need to bend them for gunwale mounts).