Forestay Turnbuckle Failure!!!

[tidalwave]

Whenever I am working on my forestay...I have my spinnaker halyard led forward to the bow and secured or my mast lift rig set up.
It means that I have to ease two lines instead of one...but I have had
the forestay try to pull out of my hands more than once.

I always assume that I am going to be clumsy and I don't want the mast
to drop into the cockpit.

I also make certain that there is no-one in the cockpit, if the boat is
at the dock while I am working on the forestay/furling gear.

[cosandman]

Wow, I wish I had seen this thread earlier...

I keep my 2003 slipped on Lake Pueblo year round. Early last week they had very high winds in excess of 60mph prior to a big winter storm moving in and the toggle piece on the end of my forestay turnbuckle failed. Fortunately, the South Shore Marina people noticed this within minutes and were able to secure my forestay (with furler and genny) with a U-bolt and nuts. More amazing was they were able to do this before a dismasting occured! I have since been down and shored up the mast with the mast raiser to take tension of the U-bolted forestay. Wow!!!

Not knowing what else to do, I contacted the folks at BWY regarding a replacement for the toggle and they are sending me a replacement turnbuckle for my CDI FF2 furler. At the time, I thought this was a "special" piece from CDI. They also instructed me on exactly how to loosen the furled sail leads, lift the drum, and inspect and replace the turnbuckle. I should have the piece in a couple of days, and if fortune is smiling and the weather cooperates this week, I will fix things up.

On inspecting the broken toggle piece, I noticed considerable wear of the toggle, holes, and clevis pin, suggesting my rigging's slackness may have contributed to failure. Only in the last year or so have I been diligently "tuning" my shrouds using a Loos gauge, using this forum for my information resource. I am sure the unpredictably high winds we get in the Rocky Mountain front range have also contributed -- I am on my third jib sock in 4 years.

I am amazed at the incredible knowledge in this forum. If I had read this thread earlier, maybe I would have inspected the piece that failed sooner and prevented this mishap. My thanks to all the incredible contributors to this forum...

Tom

[Matt19020]

Tom this is a repost from an earlier topic titled "Forestay Safety Line" You can probably search it. This is what I did after I had a failure:

This has been tested and so far all is good. Mast hound should be as hgh on the mast as possible and turnbuckle is on the port side of anchor roller. In this location there is no interference to the furling jib and the Mod was less then $100, including swagging tool from Duckworks.com This now gives me some piece of mind with a redundant forestay

[bubba]

cosandman said : I am sure the unpredictably high winds we get in the Rocky Mountain front range have also contributed -- I am on my third jib sock in 4 years.
I have a possible fix for your jib sock problem , when you put the sock on tie a line to the top and when it is up wrap the rope around the sock several times all the way down the sock this makes the jib sock not catch the wind and cause excess vibration caused by the wind that can wear out hardwear. The jib sock WITHOUT the rope around it makes a WING shape and flops around a lot in breezes above 20mph.

[ronacarme]

I think I will now apply some stainless steel anti-galling lube (by the tube at the local hardware store) on my forestay turnbuckle threads. Thanks for the reminder.
Ron