Masthead Failure
October 16, 2023
My sailing friend Steve offered to skipper for me in Paloma on a sea trial in mid-September. Unfortunately our first attempt at getting the sails set didn’t come to much, both the mainsail and the jib were too big for the mast track. But while waiting for new sails to be made up, I’ve suffered another setback… Back in September , Steve was a little sceptical when we’d unrolled the sails we were going to fit, recovered from the sail bags in the front cabin. They looked pretty heavy in comparison to the slender mast. In his view I would have been better off asking around at the club for a worn-out set of sails from a Wayfarer dinghy. Sure enough, the bolt rope on both was too wide to fit in the track, so we bundled the lot into my van, and they ended up in the dump. They were in a pretty poor shape, I couldn’s see anyone else finding a use for them.
I lifted the outboard off Paloma before leaving the marina because despite its previous clean-out it sputtered to a stop when we gave it a try, probably due to contamination in the fuel line.
When I got home I followed up Bobby’s suggestion of getting sails made by Peter Sanders. It took a week before I had a response from him but a deposit for new mainsail and furling genoa was put down on September 4th, about 20% of the final price. Then something of a setback occurred - he went to measure up a couple of weeks later and as he pulled the backstay straight, the masthead crane (the fitting at the top of the mast that the stays attach to) broke off, and the masthead light dropped into the water, just missing his head. Fortunately he was able to retrieve the very expensive polycarbonate housing. We thought that perhaps the cause was metal fatigue across the crane between a drill hole for the light and the attachment point for the stay. The mast was still supported by the other shrouds though and was not in danger of falling onto the yachts on either side.
It isn’t obvious from the photograph here but the cause of the problem was the failure of a pair of rivets that hold the crane to the top of the mast, and Cameron and his crew were able to rivet the two together again after giving both a clean up. A week or two before this had been supporting Cameron’s weight in a bosuns chair - it looks to be in pretty poor shape and the insulation on the wiring flex looks terrible, so I think it will need a proper overhaul when the boat goes into winter storage.
The Dyneema halyard is new and a big improvement over the previous spliced wire/polypropylene halyard though. This unexpected setback was easily resolved, but since it took three people to lower the mast and raise it again, it was another £500 bill - hopefully Peter will be able to get back to Paloma this week to finish off his measuring job. I’ll be onboard at the weekend because they had to cut my padlock off the hatch to retrieve the housing for the masthead light from the salon table. Not that there’s anything of value in the boat, but I want to make sure that it is all buttoned up before the next October gale arrives.