But this one takes the cake. Last Thursday, I took a day off of work to take my 3 year old on a picnic out on the boat. She is the only one still not back in school yet. We had a really nice lunch, sailing in the light wind with just a headsail...a very nice laid back day, until it was time to go home.
I furled the headsail kind of close to home and so I decided to go down a different channel near the causeway (to empty the ballast) which I don't go down very often. Probably been at least a year since I was in those parts, the channel hugs the causeway with only green markers until you get near the end where it does a 45 degree jaunt towards some hotels and at that point the red markers start again.
As I was emptying the ballast, I was going kind of fast on a plane.. Probably about 12-13 knots. I looked to see where the next channel markers were and eyeballed the red and the green about 75 yards away so thought this would be a good place to turn around. Started a slow turn to starboard which would then be followed by a sharp turn to port as there is not a lot of deep water right there. My three year old was playing in the cabin. Ooops, forgot to close the ballast valve so I turned my body around and used the boat hook to close the valve as I normally do. It slipped off the handle once so I had to do it again, that cost me a couple more seconds. When I turned around facing forward again and was about to start my turn to port, a red triangle channel marker came out of nowhere!!! I had obviously missed seeing this one when I eyeballed the markers...damned dodger must have obstructed my view!
The marker passed to the starboard side, same side I was sitting on. I didn't really have any time to react because at this speed, it was probably less than a second from the bow to the chain plates. The piling seemed like it was about 2 feet away from the hull so I was thinking I cleared it...but I didn't take the heel into account, obviously with me sitting on that side and being in a turn, the boat must have been heeled over some....just enough to catch about 2-3 inches of the edge of the triangular marker on the outboard shroud. The rigging creeked as it made contact and in my mind, I knew what was about to happen but there was no time to react. A loud crack like a tree breaking as the boat halted and then a huge spash as the furler and top part of the mast went into the water right next to me. My three year old asked why all the water came into the front hatch....I was kind of speechless at that moment (and wet). In hindsight, maybe if I had hurled my weight to the other side of the boat right when I saw the marker, I may have cleared it...but I had less than a second to react and in a semi shock, I didn't move. I suppose it could have been worse, the mast could have hit me on the head and I wouldn't be writing this. Luckily, the rigging pulled the broken piece off to the side and it appears to have only hit water. Also, the bending and breaking of the rigging took the force out of the halt so it wasn't like hitting a brick wall or anything like that.
Yes Frank, you can add me to the list you've been keeping and it broke right at the spreaders through the bolt hole. Also pretzeled one of the spreaders.
But I figure if it hadn't broke there, it would have broke somewhere else...so even if you reinforced that area, it would probably just break right above the reinforcement. You may be able to notice from the pic that the mast is bent really bad right around the break so it would have probably been totaled even if it didn't break into two pieces. The other bad thing after 3+ years of Mac ownership is that I had just gotten all the rigging tension perfect finally a couple months ago.
So now, I have to decide whether to try to have one made here or get a Mac dealer to try to piggyback one onto a boat shipment. A sailmaker even suggested trying to sleeve and weld it back but I don't think that is going to be a good option. My other decision is whether to make an insurance claim or not. I have a $500 deductible which seems to be about the price people are paying for bare 26X masts. Or, I could pay more to have a better one made locally and make an insurance claim to pay for it. Not sure if the insurance company would consider that a real replacement value though. What do you folks think I should do?
I saw Normo's post about getting one from BWY...didn't know they shipped boats to FL but then even Bill told me he has been selling to Florida customers from Wisconsin lately. There are no dealers right in the Tampa area so it would still be a drive to pick one up. I guess this would be the cheap way out with me having to transfer all the goodies from the old mast to the new myself. Probably would not be worth making a claim for anything less than $1K but then I could at least get a rigging shop to do all the tedious work.
Oh well, live and learn...I came home and immediately took the mast and all the rigging off the boat (to avoid all the questions from passersby). Now I'll be a powerboater for a while but hope to be sailing again by November when the good sailing season hits. Sheesh, I missed it last year due to my engine overheating saga, now this.
