Was I lucky or what? Forestay failure!

[Will Gilmore]

Congratulations for successfully navigating through your disaster. As you say, it could have been a lot worse than the loss is a little sail time and an $87 part.

I would guess that your 40 years of roller furling in heavy weather may have contributed, but of course, every time you tack, the angle of stress changes against your stem chain plate. It's really a wonder that more stem chain plates don't fatigue and fail after 40 years of sailing.

-Will

 

[dLj]

I would guess that your 40 years of roller furling in heavy weather may have contributed, but of course, every time you tack, the angle of stress changes against your stem chain plate. It's really a wonder that more stem chain plates don't fatigue and fail after 40 years of sailing.

-Will

I don't quite agree with that. All chain plates on sail boats should be designed and built to work well below their endurance limit. They should never fail through fatigue. I'd love to look at this failure and see why it broke.

dj