It is just coincidence that we have a run of magazine articles coming up. September Cruising World has our dismasted article. October Blue Water Sailing will have our year four "What Worked, What Didn't" article. November SAIL will have my article about the yacht Avatar which lost its rudder west of Bora Bora and then spent the next month to make their way to Pago Pago.

Originally I sent Cruising World a short and a long version or our dismasting. They chose to use the longer story but shorten it a bit to fit into the September issue. Here is the original, unedited manuscript with some images which did not appear in the magazine version. I want to thank our cruising friends on CaVa and Casteele who looked over the rough draft of this article and made valuable suggestions prior to submitting it for publication. The version of our article you see in Cruising World has changes made by their editors. Just keep clicking on the "Older" tab on the bottom left for the next image and continuation of the story.

DISMASTED

Again my head slammed into the bent and mangled mast. What had appeared a rolly anchorage amongst coral reefs was a Twirl-A-Ride at the top of our broken mast stump. The other mast half was folded over the side of the boat, dipping in the ocean.

Tethered 20 feet above the deck the words of Bill Seifert in his book Offshore Sailing were being bounced out of my memory. "Cotter pins should not be bent open more than 10 degrees." Cotter pins which were bent open at a small angle, holding dangling rigging, were easy to slip free from the clevis. The pins bent into a curlicue were taking all my effort, strength and patience to bend straight with pliers and small screwdrivers. They were becoming a real headache, in every form.

The day before, when sailing south in sunshine and gentle breeze, the squall had come on us suddenly. Rebecca, and I were below as the wind slammed. But it was only 30 knots; wind this boat can easily handle although I would have preferred to shorten sail. As I moved to the wheel to turn downwind to ease the pressure, I heard a pop and watched the top of the mast along with reefed mainsail and genoa, fold gracefully to starboard; the mast creasing just below the spreaders. Situations I had read and heard about in wild weather in terrible latitudes were now upon my wife and me. The big difference was that we were dressed in shorts and T-shirts 95 miles south of the equator and 307 miles west of the International Date Line, near the southern stretch of the Kirabati atolls.