too much tension on main?

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dlewis812

dlewis812

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May 21, 2006
321
catalina 25, 30 montauk / manhattan
sailing on someone else's cat 30, while trimming the main a shackle holding one the blocks to the boom broke off. error to put too much tension on the main? (this boat has an attached mainsail, i'm used to my loose footed).

put on a spare shackle and sailed a couple of hours. then after a jibe 3 sail slides break off (brand new sail!). had 15-20kn wind, although could have certainly trimmed the main a bit more before the jibe the boom didn't swing that hard (have certainly encountered far worse with an accidental jibe).
 
rardiH36

rardiH36

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Jun 21, 2007
2,118
Hunter Cherubini 36_80-82 Sausalito / San Francisco Bay
Hi:

I don't think that a shackle that is sized properly for the duty should "break off". By your description, is the shackle/block part of the main sheet system? If say you had a really large cabin top main sheet winch and cranked it down really hard, I would be worried about bending the boom before loosing a shackle. Sounds to me like the rigging on the boat is very long in the tooth. And/or the shackle was very undersized... as well as maybe quite old.

See the attached video for how to recover from a broken mainsheet block shackle in extreme sailing conditions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1ZqQ55T25c (Just joking with this of course :))

As to the three sail slugs, brand new sail, but were the slugs new? Again this really shouldn't happen ... certainly not three and 15-20 kt wind is not that extreme. However, was the luff properly tensioned? When I first bought my 1980 built boat, I did lose some sail slugs on the luff. But after replacement, not another one in five years. Even after many +30kt outings. Not even with an accidental jibe (set the auto pilot on a course, but forgot to engage the clutch) in strong winds that was violent enough to cause Delron bearings in my mainsheet triple to break an go rolling around the deck.:eek:
 
dlewis812

dlewis812

.
May 21, 2006
321
catalina 25, 30 montauk / manhattan
after comparing with my boat the shackles and all the slugs needed to be upgraded. best to find these things out under relatively good conditions!
 
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