lost my rig!!!

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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!
 
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Bryan C.

Questions

Scary. Glad no one got hurt. Sorry to hear about it. Not being a racer or an expert re spinnakers, a few questions (hopefully to avoid the same thing). It appears from you message that you were on a run, had the mainsail way out to one side, and the spinnaker pole would be out on the opposite side of the boom. When you say "we snap rolled into a round down and did an all standing jibe putting both the main and the pole in the water" I assume that means you jibed (accidentally?) causing the boom to swing (violently?) over to the opposite side. You then had the shock of the boom jerking over on the jibe coupled with the extra downwind stress on the pole which over came the mast. Is that what happened? Surprised none of the rigging broke, would almost think it woud have had to unless the stress was pulling down on the top of the mast. In your opinion, could this have happened if you were not running a spinnaker? Would a preventer have prevented it? Did you have your shrouds or rigging tuned in any particular way? Original rigging? Thanks for the info and sorry again that it happened.
 
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mike weaver

Answers(confessions) by the (rig) loser

What I had is known as a round down or " death roll"( I used to think that was overly dramatic- but I don't anymore). As you approach dead downwind with the spinnaker up in a big breeze the boat usually lets you know you've got problems by rolling from side to side, which you counteract by keeping the boat under the chute, heading up a bit, and by letting the pole forward to lessen the force on the spinnaker. Keeping the pole trimmed more forward and tip down also helps prevent broaching to windward- a "round up". I had no warning we were about to eat it, and can only assume that because I had the pole too far back a big puff exerted more force on the chute than the main, rolling the boat on its leeward side as the bow turned downwind. The resulting jibe was most certainly accidental, and the net result was the spinnaker pole and the boom slammed into the water as we spun out around them. Since none of the shrouds broke, and since the mast folded at the spinnaker pole attachment I assume it was the sudden force against the mast where the pole attaches that caused the mast to collapse. So the good news is this can only happen if you stick your spinnaker pole in the water. Even then its not necessarily going to result in a catastophic mast failure thankfully- last time I experienced a round down was half way to Hawaii on a C+C 40, and it scared the crap out of us even though nothing broke. And no I wasn't driving at the time.
 
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