When you've seen enough broken stuff sometimes it gets mixed up as to what was broken on what
boat. IIRC our club's Catalina 27 spreader casting failed. I believe the mast was down for some other
repair and when the spreader was pulled off you could see the casting was cracked. We also replaced the eyes that the lowers connect to with the u-bolts from Catalina Direct.
We also had an
aluminum spreader casting fail on a Neptune 24, but that one had help. Someone had replaced the
bridle on the
spinnaker pole with an eyestrap in the middle of the pole as a fix for the broken
bridle. Predictably the first time there was any
wind the
spinnaker pole folded up and the shock to the mast broke the spreader base, I believe it was the part sticking out the bottom to attach the lowers to snapped off.
Don't know how common it is for these bases to fail, but I'm not impressed with lightweight aluminum castings.
John