Saturday’s sailing was quite windy. I figured that it was going to be a great day to shake the last of the troubles out of the boat. With the help of Gary Todd I got the rudder pintels back on tight, after they had been working loose against a misaligned support at the back of the boat.
There was a strong breeze from the north which allowed some hiking but you had to quick getting back into the boat. The first lap of the race went well, falling only a short way behind Steve Dunn, Dan Simpson and Paul Farrell. Again it seems my tacking was causing me problems, I should have spent more time concentrating on getting speed out of the boat.
The second lap of the race I had fallen a little behind, getting caught out approaching the top mark. As I rounded the bottom gybe mark the wind started picking up. By the time I reached the mouth of the narrow the boat was flying and starting to get out of control going down wind. As I approach the entrance to the narrows I noticed that the forestay of the boat had gone quite slack. I assume that this was just the force from the wind pushing on the sail. The second time I looked moments later the forestay was extremely slack, and the mast came crashing down.
The mast broke between the spreaders and he hound (where the stays attach to the mast). Surprisingly there wasn’t any stress points (rivets or holes) on the mast.
At the time I was happy that the mast didn’t put a hole in the deck as it came down. The pin that the impulse mast rotates on is notorious for putting holes in decks. Unfortunately as the boat was pushed in the wind the rotation arm put a hole in the deck next to the mast step.
Looks like there will be a bit of work to do on the boat!
Look at the details from everytrail I hit around 20km before the mast broke:
Sailing on the 25th of April at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
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