Well, precelebration is the root of all failure. I should not have thought or written that all our boat problems were behind us. Heading out to race today, we noticed our mast had broken yesterday 😳😡
See that crack along the bottom of the pole launcher bracket? That is NOT supposed to be there. And you can probably see the kink at the crack too.
Looks like the aluminum corroded under the pole bracket, weakening the mast, and it cracked in the extreme conditions yesterday. Thinking about it, we were lucky not to be among those who broke their mast out on the water and had to be towed in.
Rats! 😮 So, what to do.
Well fortunately Ian Pinnell of P&B happened to have a new mast along just in case someone needed one. So yay. But it was a bare mast, some [aka a lot of] assembly required. All the hardware and lines from the old mast had to be moved over to the new one.
As I was talking to Ian about the things required to convert a new extrusion into a rigged mast he casually said, “of course you’ll have to cut it to fit”, and I thought he was joking. Nope. Because the insides of various models of 505 are different, the mast step is at different heights within the boat, so to get the same actual height you have to cut it to fit. But that was only the start.
A 505 mast is a complex beast: there are four internal halyards, shrouds and forestay, trapeze wires, the trapeze auto-lifter on the spin halyard, boom gooseneck, ram track, the spinnaker pole launcher bracket and cleats, halyard locks, and LBNL the mast foot with exit blocks for the internal lines. (If you don’t know what all of that is, no worries, you can appreciate it is a lot of “stuff”.)
After working all day we got back to where we thought we were this morning. Definitely not the plan for the day.
There *was* racing out on the water, but we were not a part of it. I’ll post a link to pics from the day when they’re online.
So what’s next … tomorrow is an “off” day for the regatta, but we’ll be finishing and then testing the new mast. Stay tuned for a report!
PS oh, and no new iPhone yet, expected tomorrow along with a new waterproof case…
San Fran Five-Oh 