Sailing last week I had a stay/chain plate break on my boat.The mid-stayattached to the bulk head(starboard )broke,due to corrosion and /or age.the remaining 2 stays were ripped loose due to unseen wood detioration under the fiberglass deck,those 2 chainplates tore looseripping up the deck.I lost my mast,jib,rollerfurling and all associated rigging,save the main sail and boom.This is a 1976 O'day 27'.Can anyone advise as to replacement costs (new mast,roller furling,jib,all stays,etc.)Finally is this all worthwhile on a 30 year old boat?
lost mast
- Thread starter BillKelly
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I am thinking you did not do a good job of not only upkeeping your boat,
but chose to endanger a crew. My assumption was you were not on the boat alone. Someone has to look to make sure a boat is safe before it goes out! Those were angry words. I hope that this happened with no one on board. I also hope you have not let the boat maintenence go to the point that the rest of the boat is worthless. Thoses were hopeful words. Sell the boat cheap and quickly to someone that will restore the value of the boat unless there is none. Sorry, to those that think I am being hard. I am glad he didn't hurt someone! You can't buy a boat and be ignorant of upkeep! That hurts People and boats! In a restorative perspective, Bill take some classes on boating and connect with people that know and can teach you about boats. Stay around here awhile and learn about owning and maintaining boats. Question, how did you save the boom if the mast is gone? sincerely r.w.landau
but chose to endanger a crew. My assumption was you were not on the boat alone. Someone has to look to make sure a boat is safe before it goes out! Those were angry words. I hope that this happened with no one on board. I also hope you have not let the boat maintenence go to the point that the rest of the boat is worthless. Thoses were hopeful words. Sell the boat cheap and quickly to someone that will restore the value of the boat unless there is none. Sorry, to those that think I am being hard. I am glad he didn't hurt someone! You can't buy a boat and be ignorant of upkeep! That hurts People and boats! In a restorative perspective, Bill take some classes on boating and connect with people that know and can teach you about boats. Stay around here awhile and learn about owning and maintaining boats. Question, how did you save the boom if the mast is gone? sincerely r.w.landau
Having lost a mast myself.......
..... on a boat that I would described as well maintained, I have to be a bit more sympathetic. One of the disadvantages of stainless steel rigging is that is often doesn't display much in the way of symptoms before failing catastrophically. Many experts say you just have to replace it pre-emptively, even though it may look fine, at about 15 years of age in the North American climate, sooner if in the tropics. The shroud that failed on my Potter was 17 years of age when it broke at the crimp. Because it is a small boat the rig is light enough I was able to retrieve it from the water and lay it on top of the cabin while I motored back. If the bulkhead was rotten, I would think there would have been some obvious signs, like discoloration of the wood. The way the lowers are secured in the deck, I'm not so sure if that would be obvious unless you were checking the deck occasionally for soundness, which is probably a good idea on an older boat. As far as where to go from here, if you are the type that has your repairs done at a boatyard, you will probably spend less if you just buy a different boat. Searching out some used spars and doing the structural repairs yourself, you could probably get back on the water for 1-2K$ I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune and glad no-one was seriously hurt - consider yourself lucky on that account.
..... on a boat that I would described as well maintained, I have to be a bit more sympathetic. One of the disadvantages of stainless steel rigging is that is often doesn't display much in the way of symptoms before failing catastrophically. Many experts say you just have to replace it pre-emptively, even though it may look fine, at about 15 years of age in the North American climate, sooner if in the tropics. The shroud that failed on my Potter was 17 years of age when it broke at the crimp. Because it is a small boat the rig is light enough I was able to retrieve it from the water and lay it on top of the cabin while I motored back. If the bulkhead was rotten, I would think there would have been some obvious signs, like discoloration of the wood. The way the lowers are secured in the deck, I'm not so sure if that would be obvious unless you were checking the deck occasionally for soundness, which is probably a good idea on an older boat. As far as where to go from here, if you are the type that has your repairs done at a boatyard, you will probably spend less if you just buy a different boat. Searching out some used spars and doing the structural repairs yourself, you could probably get back on the water for 1-2K$ I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune and glad no-one was seriously hurt - consider yourself lucky on that account.
Bill, I don't always agree with RW on some things, but in this case I do. It's very unfortunate that this had to happen to your boat, and I'm glad that nobody got hurt. This same thing happened to me while sailing alone around Newport Rhode Island years ago. I had a broken strand on my lower stay and instead of replacing the stay, I let it go for a while. I said to myself, "I'll take care of that when I get around to it." Well guess what? When that mast went, I didn't even see it go. All I heard was a loud crack and I looked on top of the cabin and the mast was gone. It bent in half and the whole sha-bang was in the water. Thank God that I wasn't walking by it when it went. I managed to save everything except the fore stay which slipped into the water when I disconnected it from the rigging. Like Dave K., I too had to tie everything down and motor my boat all the way back to Somerset Ma. on the Taunton River. Luckily, I had insurance that covered this and was able to get a new mast and stays. Total costs came to about $2400.00. I had Rig-Rite do the work. Two years later, I brought my boat down to D & R Marine to show Rudy my mods and pick up some parts for my boat. His business partner Jeff, went into my cabin and spotted a broken chain plate bracket on the bulkhead, and pointed it out to me. I would never have known about this had he not told me, but I should have been checking these things and didn't. Rudy sold me some O'day 25 chain plates and I installed them myself, but after that I had another problem; leaks around the chain plates. Once water gets into the bulkhead and the core of the deck, you're sure to develop rot in those areas. To make a long story short, it cost me a couple of hundred bucks to have plates welded to my chain plates. I did a lot of the work myself and saved a lot of money but cured that problem. I don't know what to tell you as far as which direction you should go right now, but for now on, and I speak for myself when I say this,--I am going to try and check everything I can and give immediate attention to suspected hardware on my boat. Joe
Tips for checking hardware
Sorry to hear about the accident. I have also heard that SS hardware doesn't show obvious signs of damage. Do you have any tips for checking the integrity of the rigging? I want to be safe, but I don't have the money to replace a perfectly good rig. I'm not sure how old the rig on our 1984 Oday 26 is, but I guess it could be original. We had the mast down last winter, and we visually inspected it. Everything looked fine. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Sorry to hear about the accident. I have also heard that SS hardware doesn't show obvious signs of damage. Do you have any tips for checking the integrity of the rigging? I want to be safe, but I don't have the money to replace a perfectly good rig. I'm not sure how old the rig on our 1984 Oday 26 is, but I guess it could be original. We had the mast down last winter, and we visually inspected it. Everything looked fine. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Checking rigging
I'm pretty sure that most rigging outfits can actually test the turnbuckles and toggles with a dye solution that can make small cracks in the metal show up. It's possible that they could have something out on the market for the DYI to do at home. Even with a solution of this kind, I wonder about how you could find out the condition of the strands under the swadge fittings. What I've always done to my swadge fittings, is heat them up with a hair dryer and rub bees wax on the strands where they go into the fitting. This will help keep the water and air out of the inside of the fittings and prevent rust and corrosion. I didn't make this one up. It's in my O'Day manual, but it makes a lot of sense to me. There's one thing that I neglected to mention about my broken stay in my other reply that I probably should mention now; I always had a habit of grabbing on to my stays (a little too hard maybe)and using them as a grab rail to get around them while walking to and from the bow. Not good!!! I'm thinking now that maybe this is what caused one of the strands to break on my lower stay at the swadge fitting. I no longer do this anymore, but this illustrates a perfect example of why the roller furler manufacturers advise having toggles on each end of your fore stay. Bill, I don't know how handy you are with DYI or whether you love this boat enough to want to fix it. Far be it for me to say to you from my home 1000 miles away, "Get rid of it and get something else." There's just too many variables that are ready to be investigated. For instance; can I pick up a used mast and rigging? If I buy the hardware, can I do this job myself? Can I reconstruct the damaged bulkhead and deck myself? Do I love this boat enough to fix it up? This should be your call Bill, and I wouldn't feel right in telling you what you should or shouldn't do. You could have a boat surveyor or a professional boat restorer check it out, and just go from there. Whatever decision that you come up with Bill, I wish you well. Joe
I'm pretty sure that most rigging outfits can actually test the turnbuckles and toggles with a dye solution that can make small cracks in the metal show up. It's possible that they could have something out on the market for the DYI to do at home. Even with a solution of this kind, I wonder about how you could find out the condition of the strands under the swadge fittings. What I've always done to my swadge fittings, is heat them up with a hair dryer and rub bees wax on the strands where they go into the fitting. This will help keep the water and air out of the inside of the fittings and prevent rust and corrosion. I didn't make this one up. It's in my O'Day manual, but it makes a lot of sense to me. There's one thing that I neglected to mention about my broken stay in my other reply that I probably should mention now; I always had a habit of grabbing on to my stays (a little too hard maybe)and using them as a grab rail to get around them while walking to and from the bow. Not good!!! I'm thinking now that maybe this is what caused one of the strands to break on my lower stay at the swadge fitting. I no longer do this anymore, but this illustrates a perfect example of why the roller furler manufacturers advise having toggles on each end of your fore stay. Bill, I don't know how handy you are with DYI or whether you love this boat enough to want to fix it. Far be it for me to say to you from my home 1000 miles away, "Get rid of it and get something else." There's just too many variables that are ready to be investigated. For instance; can I pick up a used mast and rigging? If I buy the hardware, can I do this job myself? Can I reconstruct the damaged bulkhead and deck myself? Do I love this boat enough to fix it up? This should be your call Bill, and I wouldn't feel right in telling you what you should or shouldn't do. You could have a boat surveyor or a professional boat restorer check it out, and just go from there. Whatever decision that you come up with Bill, I wish you well. Joe
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