Re failure modes of SD
sails:
As already mentioned on another thread we had a failure back in 2011 on a
Yanmar SD20 due to brute force.
We sailed at full speed into a huge pile of disposed
fishing net, which stopped us within a second. The pile of net was the size of a house, and floating just under the surface.
It was visible by the old dirt marks around the SD that it had moved a few mm and we took very small amounts of
water. Just enough to trigger the bilgepump every few hours.
After liftout it became clear that the seal was still OK, but the fibreglass around the bolts was cracked and
water was creeping in through these cracks.
This happened just weeks after we replaced these
seals, no clue if the old ones (although looking as new) would have survived as well.
This happened on our
Lagoon 410, which had the engines under the
bed and no watertight bulkhead. That -in combination with crossing the atlantic- was the reason to replace the
seals.
I don't know about the FP
Orana but if its like our FP Mahe with watertight bulkheads glassed into place and no penetrations below bridgedeck level I would not change the seals without good reason.
there are better ways to spend the
money to improve
safety.