On February 20,2014 while sailing North from St George, Grenada toward Carriacou we experienced a failure of the compression strut under our main mast, this caused the main sail rigging to go slack.
My first reaction was to turn into the wind to unload the sails and begin the process of furling the sails.
Fortunately our good friend, Chris of the s/v Quicksilver was in radio contact with us and advised me to
attach the main halard to the aft most point of our vessel then winch it as tight as possible to secure the main mast. This worked quite well but there was still considerable movement of the main mast side to side,
at this time I remembered having some cargo straps on board, so I placed them on the port and starboard
main stays, that stopped most of the movement and we then returned to St George, thankful that the mast was still standing and we were still healthly.
A few days later we had the mast removed so that repairs could begin.
It's now nearing three weeks later and the repairs are progressing but slowly.
( Island Time Mon)
 |
| The cargo straps used to tighten the side stays. |
 |
| Note the amount of slack in these aft stays, they should be relative tight. |
 |
| A thirty ton crane truck was used to remove the mast. |
No comments:
Post a Comment