Dismasted
15 September 2011
It is coincidence that we have 4 articles in three different sailing magazines over the next four months.
Our dismasting article is in the Sept issue of Cruising World. We gave them a long and a short version. They chose the long version then reduced the word count to fit in the magazine. We have posted here the original long version with some images which were not used in the magazine article. We want to thank our friends on CaVa and Casteele for looking over the final rough draft of the article and making valuable suggestions for improving it.
October, Blue Water Sailing, will have our annual What Worked, What Didn't article.
November, SAIL, is scheduled to have our article about the yacht Avatar which lost its rudder west of Bora Bora and spent the next month working their way to Pago Pago, American Samoa. Then in the November, Blue Water Sailing, is our haul out in New Zealand article.
For the below dismasted article, just go to the bottom left of the screen and press "Older" to go to the next section.
Thanks for stopping by our blog site. Patrick and Rebecca
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 water.
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.