G
Guest
I hope I can save someone from the thrill I had watching my mast collapse a couple of days ago. This is especially for anyone with an early 90's Z-spar mast that has the plastic fitting in the recessed track that the spinnaker pole rides on. Its broken so often with relatively minor stress that I always assumed it would be a safety valve in case the pole ever went in the water. It wasn't! I'm still in shock over how easily I became a power boat. We were sailing in about 20-25 knots of breeze with chute and full main with no hint of lack of control, probably because we were sailing pretty deep with the wind at about 160. Any higher and I would have hopefully realized the need to not have the pole back as far as we did. With no premonitory rock and roll all of a sudden we snap rolled into a round down and did an all standing jibe putting both the main and the pole in the water. Before I could say a word the mast folded over into the water. Since the fold was a few feet above the boom I assume it was where the spinnaker car had been, and although the plastic car fitting had broken off it must have still giving enough of a shock load to bend the mast before it let go. As best as I could tell ( since the bulk of the mast was under water) all the shrouds and stays were intact, so I don't see any other explanation. Luckily no one was hurt.We were able to salvage the boom but had to cut the mast free saying goodbye to my new main, used but still good chute, and all the rigging. Lessons learned were 1) Don't bring the pole back too far in heavy air and 2) Let the forguy go in a round down 3) Don't count on" break away" gear always breaking!