Quote:
Originally Posted by boatman61
Rubbish.. I can think of at least 3 boats that have lost their mast due to rig failure.. a Spanish friend got rolled and dismasted on his way to the Canaries.. MarkJ came close when his forestay went on his way to the Carib..
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This was in response to someone saying accidents do not often happen.
Yes, I snapped me forestay in the middle of the Atlantic and could have easily lost my stick.
Thats why I do take these threads seriously and would prefer the forum peanuts to play in another forum or outside in the kindy sand pit.
I was coming from the Canaries to
St Martin as the last leg of my
circumnavigation. i did a rig check in the Canaries and had the intention to rerig in
St Martin as the
rigging was original.
400nm before St Martin in about 30 knots on a beam reach I had two
reefs in the main and was just wondering if I should put another roll in the
genoa when Neptune answered my question.
The Auto Pilot was on and I headed dead downwind.
The
genoa was still held up by its
halyard and I was able to gently furl it.
Then I thought it would be a good moment to stop and think. Which I thought was a good idea

because I was just about to lower the
mainsail. Then I thought that theres not much holding the mast up, and the
compression of the
halyard would be adding a bit, and I didnt have 400 NMs of
fuel anyway.
I ran my
spinnaker pole topping
lift to the bow, obviously.
Keeping a dead downwind course I was heading towards
Antigua also 400nms
So things were quite OK, I could sail to
Antigua, fill up, and
motor to st Martin. As it turned out over the next few days the
wind moderated and got a bit more south in it so I was able to sail 300 miles and motored the last 100.
Reasons why I was lucky:
Extremely lucky I could furl the genoa.
Wind was only 30 knots anyway. Then it moderated in the next few days.
I could
head downwind and still be getting somewhere to fix the boat.
I stopped and thought about my problem before I screwed the fixing of it
I didnt try to drop the genoa, nor the main.
When the rigger showed me where the forestay had broken the break was more than 1 cm inside the swaged fitting at the mast
head. SO theres no way I could ever have spotted a problem in any check. And it was a problem, at least 4 of the broken strands had rust on the cut surface of the wire, that means it had been weak for some time.... So very lucky.
That, my friends, is why I read and examine these threads... Because we never know what our problem is going to be so we can only learn from other peoples situations. Thats why I would never sail with the peanuts who say examining this thread is irrelevant (and then do 50 off topic posts) because they have no understanding about their lack of predicability of their own boat, the
weather or anything that may help them in an, all too frequent, problem.
Mark