dismasted sailboat

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Dismasted at sea: What to do during and after a dismasting

• September 30, 2019

Losing your mast is one of the worst things that can happen during an ocean crossing – bluewater veteran Susan Glenny explains what to do after a dismasting

When the Hallberg Rassy 46 Lykke dismasted during the 2017 ARC, the spinnaker pole was drafted in as a jury mast to support a light and VHF aerial

During the 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race , my yacht Olympia ’ s Tigress , a Beneteau First 40, lost her rig through a simple split pin failure.

We were 40 miles offshore at the time, with a trained but inexperienced charter crew on board. It was blowing a Force 6 and the middle the night. The following are some of the lessons we learned from the incident.

Just before midnight I went down below after my watch, having just come off the helm. I heard shouting from on deck and the first mate calling: “Sue, get on deck now – the shroud’s gone!”

Olympia’s Tigress setting off in the 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race, before the rig failure. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

I rushed to get my lifejacket back on and pulled myself up the companionway. Looking out I could see that the V1 rod from the port side of the rig had detached completely at the first spreader. The rod was still attached at the deck chainplate but was arched over and dragging in the water. I turned to the helmsperson and shouted: “Whatever you do, don’t tack.”

We were upwind on starboard tack beating into a moderate to rough seaway, and if you were looking at the rig fully loaded from the starboard side you could have been fooled into thinking all was well.

But this was just the start – it would be ten hours before yacht and crew made it safely to land. For myself and four other crew, who’d just spent a full four hours on watch on deck, this was to be particularly exhausting.

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My first plan was to try to keep the yacht stable under sail as we were closer towards land – and potential rescue – on the starboard tack. I called Falmouth Coastguard from our satellite phone and explained that we had a major rig failure; they contacted the Irish Coast Guard on our behalf. They also advised us to have our EPRIB on deck.

From midnight until around 0130 we sailed on starboard tack to get closer to land, but progressively got knocked and were no longer laying the Irish coast.

We managed to sail about 15 miles further inshore before, as predicted, the wind began to back. Soon we were no longer laying even the Fastnet Rock.

Safe after a lifeboat tow back to port, but Olympia’s Tigress had lost her mast above the first set of spreaders

At this point, around 0200, and two hours after we first noticed the issue with the shroud, I decided we needed to down sails and be prepared for whatever was going to happen to us next.

At first we tried to stabilise the rig using halyards as we motored towards Kinsale, but it quickly became apparent how completely unstable the whole rig was.

The flexibility of the aluminium mast was quite terrifying and in the rolling seaway the top of the mast was swaying up to 3-4m from the centreline. This caused ricocheting of the stabilising halyards from the deck and the noise was deafening, like a huge recoiling spring.

The Class 40 Phor-ty lost her rig during the same race – these aerial shots reveal the dangerous tangle of lines, rigging, sail and mast across the deck and cockpit. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

I was extremely concerned about having anyone on deck because it was apparent that the rig was eventually going to come down.

Having no windward force on the rig, as you would do when sailing, meant the rig’s movement and which way it would fall was also totally unpredictable.

Thunderbolt crack

I sent all the crew below and slowed the boat speed to 3 knots. We were in contact with the Irish Coast Guard by satellite phone and limited VHF.

The Courtmacsherry lifeboat had been mustered in case the broken spar holed the boat.

At 0420 the yacht rolled violently to port in a big wave and, as we rolled back to starboard, the mast cracked with a sound like a thunderbolt.

It fractured cleanly at the first spreader level and fell to the starboard side, taking out all of the guard wires and damaging the deck.

The standing rigging on the port side was already compromised but the rig remained attached by the starboard V1 rod, the forestay rod and the backstay, which was Dyneema.

What followed was an extremely stressful 25 minutes of cutting the rig away, trying various methods, because you never knew what was going to work until it did.

The crew worked in groups on different parts of the rig, and we had the liferaft prepared to deploy in case the spar ruptured the hull.

The second mate had climbed what remained of the rig to cut the wires from the mast. What I remember most clearly is that absolutely everyone on board was waiting for instruction on what to do next.

The hardest part was the determination required to sever the highly loaded and arched rod rigging. The V1, with the rest of the rig, was moving up and down with the seaway and it felt like a miracle when we managed to saw it off – it was just brute force sawing with a hacksaw that got rid of it.

A hacksaw should deal with a felled forestay – but be aware that rigging under tension can whiplash unpredictably when cut

Next we removed the forestay by unscrewing the bottle screws and lastly freed the backstay.

Five-hour ordeal

At 0445 the rig sank. There was silence on board; no one said a thing for at least a minute. We were all in total and utter shock after a five-hour ordeal.

I first established if everyone was OK. Our youngest crew member had a metal shard in his eye resulting from the flying sparks of an angle grinder, while my second mate had taken a serious blow in the face as he detached the forestay from its fixing; the rod had ricocheted into his face. So we began tending to the injuries.

By 0500 the RNLI lifeboat arrived on the scene. They first checked with us that the rig had sunk, and we communicated with them through visual signalling and limited coms on a handheld VHF radio – the fixed VHF antenna went with the mast.

At this stage we were still 25 miles offshore – we were happy to motor to Kinsale or Cork but the lifeboat crew deemed it better to tow us given our lack of VHF and associated electrics. The stability of the yacht was also severely compromised without the mast.

It took four hours under tow to reach Ireland from 0530-0930. My first mate, Cath, and I alternated the helming watches for this period and allowed the crew to sleep.

I remember it being bitterly cold and us both trying to shield each other in turn from the wind exposure being generated from the fast tow – the cold was possibly exacerbated by the fact we were both tired and utterly burnt out.

Many thanks to my amazing crew that night: Cath, Willy, Felix, Simon, Gina, Matt, Conor, Fiona and Luke. Each and every one of them played a vital role in bringing our vessel back to land.

Many thanks also to Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Falmouth, the Irish Coast Guard and the Courtmacsherry lifeboat and crew.

What to do after a rig loss

• Communicate the situation as early as possible (in our case we were able to do this before the rig came down) with a Pan Pan call to a coastal radio station. This can either be through satellite phone or VHF radio, but remember as soon as you lose your rig you are also likely to lose your VHF aerial and radio communications. For us having a satellite phone was key.
• If you have spars in the water, get your liferaft and grab bags ready to deploy within 15 seconds. Have all the crew in lifejackets and waterproofs if they are not already.
• It’s likely that even after failure the rig will still be attached to the vessel via three standing rig points. For example, the port side failed on Olympia ’ s Tigress , but the rig was still attached via the forestay, the backstay and the starboard V1 rod. As soon as the rig has broken, split the crew into three teams to work on each area, and make sure you have three sets of whatever cutting gear you are using. You don’t want a jagged mast hanging around in the water next to you any longer than necessary. Nor do you want to successfully cut two points away, only to find the sinking rig dragging your bow down at the forestay (yes, that happened to us).
• On a safety checklist you may have to tick a box saying you have tested your rig cutting gear on a piece of material similar to that in your rig. However, you also need to ask yourself whether the cutting gear will work in the same way when the rig, rods or Dyform wires are moving up and down in a rough seaway, all in different sync to the boat’s movement. We’d always thought that having an angle grinder was the answer to cut away all rigging but we discovered we were wrong. With the rig moving it was very difficult to cut a groove in the rod. It also produced sparking and metal files, one of which flew into a crew member’s eye.
• Carry multiple pairs of goggles in your rig-cutting bag to prevent eye injury.
• Carry multiple cutting methods. We found that with rods the only thing that worked was brute force, cutting a groove with a standard high quality hacksaw, we had replacement blades and three hacksaws so were able to have new blades and saws ready rapidly, so as to have no delays in the cutting.
• Before heading to sea, think through any other methods you could use to detach stays and shrouds, for example removing pins or unscrewing bottle screws. It didn’t apply in our case, but I did realise the complexity that would be added by having a furling headsail system. Make sure you are familiar with how to remove a furler from the deck and have the tools on board to do this.
• If you have a period of time – as we did – with an unstable mast that has lost its structural integrity, use halyards to triangulate it to strong points on the deck. This might be more effective in a calm sea but for us the pre-break movement in the rig at the top (4-5m of sideways flexing) was scarily powerful. Before the mast broke, the ricocheting of the halyards thanks to the enormous flexing of the rig caused damage to the glassfibre at the deck mountings.
• Protect crew wherever possible; if the mast is going to come down there is less risk in having one person on deck than full crew. I stayed on deck alone while we attempted to motor towards Cork. The crew stayed ready below, formulating a plan for cutting the rig and communicating with the coastguard.
• When the rig comes down, if you can be sure the prop is free of lines try to manoeuvre the yacht under engine so the rig is down-sea and away from the hull.

The Hallberg-Rassy 46 Lykke dismasted during the 2017 ARC. Even after the rig had been cut away, the damaged guardrails, stanchions and metalwork create a hazard on deck. Photo: Stephan Mühlhause

Dos and Don’ts

• Do: Preserve everything you can – boom, lines, sails, blocks, clips etc. Rig loss claims are huge: ours was a £55,000 claim which didn’t include the boom or sails that we’d managed to conserve. Much more and the insurer would have considered writing the boat off.
• Do: Write an extensive plan of how you would get rid of your rig and talk through this plan in your crew safety briefing. Preassign roles to each person.
• Don’t: Be reticent in making rescue organisations aware of the situation. If a broken rig spar is going to go through the hull then help being on the way is better earlier than later.

Can you use rig cutting tools with one hand or will you be unable to hold on? Hydraulic cutters may be easiest.

Rig cutting options

• Hacksaws and multiple spare blades – highly effective on rod rigging
• High quality bolt croppers – effective on Dyform, but not effective on rods
• Hydraulic bolt croppers – effective on Dyform and rods
• Explosive rod and spar breakers – difficult to obtain in the UK
• High quality angle grinder – potentially useful for cutting rods and Dyform, but were found to be quickly effective on sails and Dyneema!
• Sharp, deck mounted safety knives
• High quality scissors

About the author

Susan Glenny is a commercial Ocean Yachtmaster and is school principal of Tigress Sport Sailing. She has skippered four transatlantic races and many offshore and inshore events in the Caribbean, Europe and Mediterranean. She leads Team Tigress and The Sirens Racing.

Dismasted at Sea: What To Do (During & After)

Last Updated by

Capt Chris German

June 15, 2022

There are few incidents at sea that are scarier than a dismasting. The best solution to a Dismasting is to avoid it in the first place, but if you do drop the stick, point your boat towards home, make sure everyone is safe and do the best you can.

I have been fortunate enough to experience a great many things at sea. I have seen the green flash, I have witnessed and sailed through a waterspout and I have swam with dolphins in the currents of the Gulf Stream. But one experience, I can happily say, I have avoided, is the experience of being dismasted at sea.

Whether your boat falls in the class of dinghy or bluewater, the event of having a mast fall down while you sit beneath it has to be one of the scariest experiences one might ever experience underway. I have witnessed it happen twice from afar and both times it looked like a harrowing experience to say the least. I have also seen the aftermath of dismastings multiple times. And the one takeaway I can offer from each and every dismasting I have seen is, it's just as avoidable, as it was scary.

Table of contents

A first hand encounter

My first dismasting was on a tiny hunter 21 in Pequot Harbor during tropical Storm Ernesto. The boat was riding high on the mooring during the early hours of the storm but the owner had made a critical error in leaving the roller furled jib up for the storm. By mid morning the winds were topping a steady 50 out of the southwest and the boat was heading north east with moorings tied to its bow and stern. My manager, Captain Jeff Engborg, a long time captain and master of all things mechanical, eyed the critical failure from the deck of the club house saying, “the jib sheet is coming out”. The jib sheets which were wound tightly around the furled jib, began wiggling loose. Before he could utter another word, a gust topping 70 miles per hour came screaming in from the Sound and the unfurled jib on a dead down wind run. It snagged only briefly on the shroud before billowing out over the bow pulpit and folding the mast in half.

I was fifty yards from that boat but the violence of the mast falling has stayed with me ever since.

The next one I saw was on the water just off Seaside Park in Bridgeport, CT. It was a cool October morning in New England and the Catalina Association was hosting a rally of boats in Black Rock Harbor. The winds blew a steady 35 out of the east and the fleet was rounding the point on the way in, having decided that the weather was a bit too much for the aged fleet of cruisers. Just as this one particular boat, a 35 footer from the mid 80’s, came from behind the lee of the lighthouse, a gust ripped the mast from their deck and plopped it sloppily on the leeward side of the vessel, shredding the main and tangling the standing rigging like a slinky. The boat stopped hard, as if it had an emergency break, and the owners popped their heads up from beneath the carnage like stunned meerkats on the Serengeti. I didn’t see what they did next but instead high-tailed it back to the dock fearing my old boat would be next.

The best strategy is avoidance

 In both of those previous cases, proper planning and maintenance would have been an excellent alternative to dismasting. In the case of the Hunter, the owner should have removed all the sails from the boat prior to the storm, or tied a pile of lines on to the jib rather than just wrapping the sheets. As they say in the USCG, “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot”

In the case of the Catalina, planning should have included reading a weather report and turning back before the winds got too heavy. The owner failed to recognize that their boat was no spring chicken and that the conditions were too much for his 20 year old Catalina.

I have been told by one of the best surveyors I have ever worked with, Wayne Canning of Ocean Navigator Magazine, that stainless steel rigging has a lifespan of 10 years. After that time, a rig’s chance of coming down increases exponentially without a serious inspection of the rig and replacement. Micro cracks can form in the wire rope of shrouds and stays, as well as in chain plates and turnbuckles. These cracks can only be seen by high tech imaging which most riggers can do for you or you can send them out to an independent lab to be examined yourself. Some riggers will reuse parts of the rig that are free of defect to save some cash, but after 10 years and the expense of pulling the stick, removing the parts, shipping them to a lab and paying for the test, maybe it’s better if you just replace everything.

Wire rope is actually quite affordable and doing the labor yourself can save a ton of money. But if a $20,000 mast comes down because you made a mistake there will be no one else to blame but you.

After the mast has fallen

Witnessing the violence of two masts dropping has convinced me that I have no interest in ever experiencing a dismasting first hand. But just in case, I have always carried a sharp knife, a set of bolt cutters, a first aid kit and a flask of rum on board if it ever did happen. The knife would be used to cut running rigging from the boat should I ever need to and the bolt cutters would be used to part standing rigging and mast wreckage from the decks. The first aid kit would hopefully be useful if my head wasn’t separated from my body, and if and when it ever did happen (and I just happened to survive), I would need a shot rum almost immediately following.

The best way to survive a dismasting is to avoid it in the first place. But once the rig is down in part or full, your attention immediately should come to survival. A rig below the hull can foul rudders and propellers and act as a sea anchor for the boat. With no mast, a sailboat becomes either a vessel not under command or a power boat, so if you have a motor, protect it cause that will be your last option as you watch your rig sink slowly into the great abyss.

If you're lucky, as both the dismasted boats I saw, you will be close to port and can either limp home or get a tow. But if you are out to sea and your mast falls (and no one gets injured badly), will anyone hear it? Your obligation is to use what equipment you do have left, to get your boat and yourself back home safely. If it is only part of the mast that must be cast off, use what is left on board to jury rig a sail and get yourself back to the nearest shipping channel or port of call asap. Depending on your distance from shore, use of your motor may be limited to a few hours at a time to conserve fuel and charge the batteries. I would consider a dismasting as a distress qualifying event and would hail a “mayday” as quickly as possible but that is up to you as the skipper.

Other boats and sea stories of dismasting

I have witnessed two boats lose their mast, but I have seen the aftermath of a great many more. Perched at the crossroads of the North Atlantic on the ICW in Beaufort, North Carolina, one can witness all sorts of ways that sailboats might be damaged. And in all too honest truth, I have seen boats come in sans mast all the time. But I can recall two very interesting cases where otherwise beautiful vessels were befouled for otherwise completely avoidable reasons. Both times, it was owner error that dropped the masts.

The first example that comes to mind is a 50 foot lagoon catamaran that was dismasted in Hurricane Florence. The boat had just received a complete overhaul and was being prepped for charter work, a logical use for such a grand vessel, given the tourism economy of coastal Carolina. She was at the dock in the storm and from all accounts had a brand new mast and rig, which should have withstood even Hurricane force winds. But even stainless steel is no match for mother nature when poor planning is at hand. The owner failed to remove the stack pack that held the main sail on top of the boom and that was just enough in the three days of 80 mile an hour winds to fold her mast into a new form of origami. I snapped a few photos of the wreckage just as the winds abated. Thankfully no one in our town was injured in this historic storm but the next day I would discover that my boat was also wrecked in the storm. I now feel completely chagrined for having the audacity to take these pictures of someone else's heartache, but offer them to you as a lesson and a warning.

The last sea story I have which I care to share is perhaps the most egregious example of poor planning on an owner's part. Oh that I had a photo! Once again the story is set in Beaufort but this time it was a 65 foot monohull that made me drool with envy. She was a stunning example of modern ship construction and I eyed her as she slowly inched her way between the sand bars and into the harbor that evening. She was supposed to be in port for just a weekend as she made her way north, up the coast to New York, commanded by some hedge fund manager who was supposed to take her as a prize among the spoils of Wall Street. He had more money than experience and was bringing her in for fuel and provisions and no doubt a nice dinner shoreside so he could show off his assets off to the other credit card captains over the weekend on the Beaufort waterfront. What he failed to notice was that his 70-foot mast on his vessel was inconsistent with the new 65-foot bridge which linked Radio Island to downtown Beaufort and he slammed his mast head into the bridge going six knots at 10 PM. The next morning his boat conspicuously appeared on the town dock and stayed there, his mast 20 feet shorter than it was when he pulled into port, for the next 18 months with a for sale sign on it. I never met the owner and have no idea what happened to that boat, but I do know a clearer example of poor planning does not exist and a more avoidable situation never was.

If you do go, make sure you come home

Whether you have experienced a dismasting or simply seen the aftermath, you cannot help but walk away with a sour feel in the pit of your stomach. There is no more violent yet avoidable situation that I can think of at sea. Short of Captain Aubrey losing his mizzen while rounding Cape Horn in Master and Commander, I cannot think of any excuse a modern sailor might have to be out there when conditions favor a dismasting. There is no reason to push one’s vessel to the point of dismasting and I think each example I have given demonstrates that point. Some pre-planning and good maintenance can avoid all but the worst of dismasting conditions. But if you do find yourself in peril and the unthinkable happens, remember the welfare of your crew and that your primary objective is to return your ship to port, even if it is a bit shorter than when you left. Thanks for reading and do good, have fun and sail far.

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Capt Chris German is a life long sailor and licensed captain who has taught thousands to sail over the last 20 years. In 2007, he founded a US Sailing-based community sailing school in Bridgeport, CT for inner city youth and families. When Hurricane Sandy forced him to abandon those efforts, he moved to North Carolina where he set out to share this love for broadcasting and sailing with a growing web-based television audience through The Charted Life Television Network.

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Dismasted sailboat needs a fuel drop off

• Add to quote

Dismasting in the remoteness of the Indian Ocean

That's not the Indian Ocean. That's the Southern Ocean. 1000 nautical miles south of Madagascar, 1600 miles from Cape Town and over 3000 miles from Western Australia. The Crozet Islands were around 300 miles to his south. As I said in the thread about the idiot in the Hamster Wheel, those racing solo around the world are just as stupid and if some Coast Guard arrests Hamster Man they should also arrest Southern Ocean Man. No Soup For You!  

MarkofSeaLife said: That's not the Indian Ocean. That's the Southern Ocean. 1000 nautical miles south of Madagascar, 1600 miles from Cape Town and over 3000 miles from Western Australia. The Crozet Islands were around 300 miles to his south. As I said in the thread about the idiot in the Hamster Wheel, those racing solo around the world are just as stupid and if some Coast Guard arrests Hamster Man they should also arrest Southern Ocean Man. No Soup For You! Click to expand...

Is there a latitude where the Indian becomes the Southern Ocean. Or as you head south it is Indian Ocean, then the southern Indian Ocean, then the Northern Southern Ocean Then the Southern Ocean. Then the Southern Southern Ocean, Then, Oops Antarctica.  

garymalmgren said: Is there a latitude where the Indian becomes the Southern Ocean. Or as you head south it is Indian Ocean, then the southern Indian Ocean, then the Northern Southern Ocean Then the Southern Ocean. Then the Southern Southern Ocean, Then, Oops Antarctica. Click to expand...

OK, OK, Now, looking at Wikipedia, there seems to have been some highly political differences in history about where the boarder of the Southern Ocean is. I thought it was 40 degrees south, the Roaring 40's ... but thats too simple! The northern limits of the Southern Ocean were moved southwards in the IHO's 1937 second edition of the Limits of Oceans and Seas . The Southern Ocean then extended from Antarctica northwards to latitude 40° south between Cape Agulhas in Africa (long. 20° east) and Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia (long. 115° east), and extended to latitude 55° south between Auckland Island of New Zealand (long. 165° or 166° east) and Cape Horn in South America (long. 67° west). [16] The Southern Ocean did not appear in the 1953 third edition because "... the northern limits ... are difficult to lay down owing to their seasonal change ... Hydrographic Offices who issue separate publications dealing with this area are therefore left to decide their own northern limits. (Great Britain uses the Latitude of 55° South) ". Instead, in the IHO 1953 publication, the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans were extended southward, the Indian and Pacific Oceans (which had not previously touched pre 1953, as per the first and second editions) now abutted at the meridian of South East Cape , and the southern limits of the Great Australian Bight and the Tasman Sea were moved northwards. [9] Maybe its a bit like Pluto... De-Oceaned! I feel warmer already! Mark  

I think it was last year when the Southern Ocean officially became an ocean. I didn't see any limits, but I'd guess it would be where there are no longer pleasant days of sailing. Even if the winds aren't extreme, I imagine the swell never stops.  

MarkofSeaLife said: @Chili Palmer you might need to bare with me a bit for me to explain why I do see a correlation, and Im not in anyway trying to be trite or to think that Hamster Man is anything but a nutter. I also recently had a long chat with @Jeff_H before he understood my viewpoint. Backgrounder, yes I have crossed "the pond" a few times. I think more than anyone else on this forum except for @capta : 3 east to west Trans- Atlantic's, 1 West to east Trans Atlantic; 3 Caribbean to NYC; 3 NYC to Caribbean; 2 east to west trans Mediterranean; 1 south Atlantic Canaries to Argentina; 1 x trans Pacific, 1 trans Indian ocean; a fair few East coast Australia Sydney to Great Barrier Reef, and 1 Sydney to Darwin, Indonesia, Thailand. Planning 2024 Caribbean to Maine & return; 2025 Caribbean to UK; 2026 UK, Med, Caribbean. My idea of what "seamanship" is all about is completing the passage . That sounds simple but its not. Hamsterman could never complete an upwind/upcurrent trans Atlantic in his wheel. But he could very well be able to do the East West Trans Atl as its downwind and down current. Bath tubs have done that. A bit of floating wood can do that. Hell, that guy in the 1970s Steve Callagan(??) did it in a life raft from 2 days outside the Canaries till he was washed up in Antigua. My idea of Seamanship is to get your ship/boat/wheel through its passage unassisted, without unscheduled pitt stops, without breaches of safety, without significant breakages that cause an abort of the passage or rescue etc. My argument with @Jeff_H was that he tries to make his boat sail to the best if the boats ability. Whereas I try to sail my boat to complete the passage. Sailing the boat to its best ability (the BOATS best ability/efficiency etc) is, obviously at, or close to Hull Speed or faster if the hull form allows it. Sailing to complete the passage means to sail in a manner not to break anything, to keep the "energy" of the boat as low as possible; to avoid wind that would increase the energy or % chance of a breakage. And in the event of a breakage that the energy expended on the boat at the time was so low as to reduce the damage to allow the completion of the passage. When my boat starts going anywhere near Hull Speed I slow it down. I sail long passages conservatively. Case/Method: A few years ago about 800 miles west of the Azores a storm brewed over Cape Hatteras heading our way. A boat 24 hours ahead of us emailed he was going to try to get to the Azores before it hit. I knew I couldnt. I did a 7 day diversion. 7 days!! Because he was trying hard to beat the storm he broke his auto pilot 18 hours out and was very luck not to get into deep strife. I was fine and sailed in a week later. But heres the rub: 6 boats were sunk in that storm near the Azores. Like the ones in the Indian Ocean/Southern Ocean right now, the 6 were race boats in the Jester Challange. I contend race boats break my rule of seamanship unless they are in a contained environment close to ports/assistance/rescue because they are running their boats too hard, too fast, with too high energy, to have a % safety factor that allows for the completion of the passage. I contend 4 boats in difficulties in a week proves this. Check Marinetraffic.com for that area of ocean and theres no help out there. Theres no shipping lanes there, no ships, the closest ship maybe a week away. The Tony Bullimore rescue the navy ship steamed south west from Perth for 1 whole week to reach the rescue site. * My boat does not go to the Horn, the Cape, Greenland or anywhere but the tropical cruising routes. * You point out the race is well organised. Organisers specifically waive any claim to assessing the viability of boats in their races/rallys/cruises etc They might do a safety equipment inspection but read the fine print of the contract you sign, they're not liable for nothing when it comes to seamanship, its the skipper one. The organisation is sitting in front of a fireplace in New York, La Rochelle, or Cowes and most would have never sailed a bout in the Roaring 40's let alone at hull speed for 6,000nms! The Jester Challange also has an organisation. Again whats "well organised" and how do we know? If 6 hamster wheels set off together after forming a Yacht Club with silk ties and club flags would that then make then acceptable? Of course not. 🤣🤣🤣 * Remember the chart is a Mercator Projection. That stretch of water around the 7 Capes is one hell of a long way. Sailing the way I do doesn't make me 'right', it doesn't mean I don't break things, nor does it mean disaster wont happen. But the percentage chance of it happening disastrously is much lower than others. I believe thats the spirit or the weird word seamanship . Mark Click to expand...

When I began ocean sailing a very large part of the preparation was for each skipper to have some idea of what he/she would do, and have aboard what was needed, should the boat suffer catastrophic damage. There just wasn't a "get out of a scary situation free" card, back then. Of course, it was a great deal easier on wooden vessels with wooden spars, long straight keels and keel hung rudders. to jury rig some form of locomotion. With celestial navigation being an almost mystic art and DR being something each skipper practiced almost without thinking about, there were many, many fewer unprepared people putting to sea. And a good thing, too. Rescue wasn't hours away, or days even, but almost assuredly months (by chance in that case), or never. It was a case of do or die. I've never been a fan of pleasure boats being able to take advantage of the rescue services provided for commercial mariners, for free. Most of us couldn't afford the service and no insurance company could take that sort of hit on a vessel paying the stipend we pleasure sailors pay for offshore sailing. Perhaps, were a policy instituted whereby those pleasure sailors without sufficient knowledge and experience had to pay for their "get out of a scary situation free" card, then there would be many fewer times that the rescuers had to put their lives on the line for those who shouldn't be there in the first place. I'm not advocating licensing or regulating, just paying for services rendered.  

“My idea of what "seamanship" is all about is completing the passage . That sounds simple but its not. Hamsterman could never complete an upwind/upcurrent trans Atlantic in his wheel.” Sounds logical. But how many thought Alain Bombard had even the most remote chance? My grandfather sailed to Hawaii, Samoa, and Guadalcanal. Later, to UK. Then North Africa, and later France. His chance of failure was high. The torpedo didn’t help. But the fact that he and his cargo got through- and others didn’t - was an acceptable risk. Sometimes I do things that have a high probability of failure. Almost everything of significance I’ve done has been in spite of others trying to stop me. Sometimes i get lucky, sometimes I pull it off the next try. The risk of loss to the Spanish treasure fleets was astonishing. I think they were nuts- not the rich backers, but the sailors themselves. A successful passage and return though had great reward…but does all reward have to be monetary? There’s nothing like pulling into port and saying “ha! We pulled it off!” I guess we failed passagemaking thrice this year, heading out and failing to make the destination port. But the failure still forced refreshing of heavy weather sailing, and instilled confidence in crew and boat As for proximity to life saving services, is there a difference between the southern oceans and ten miles from shore when the coast guard refuses to go out? I like that definition of seamanship. I do try to keep to that. I didn’t always. Not everyone has to be of the same mind.  

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What To Do In A Dismasting And How To Prepare

Having recently been dismasted off the NW coast of France , I have been asked lots of questions from fellow sailors about what it was like; what we would do differently; what worked well; what didn’t; how could they prepare. To address some of these questions and hopefully help you prepare should you ever been unfortunate enough to find yourself in this situation, I’ve covered all of the questions I’ve been asked below. If you have any other specific questions, please do leave a question in the comments below, or contact me.

< Read the full story of our dismasting >

No. If you’ve read any of my blog posts before, you’ll know I am of the belief that fear has no place on a sailing boat. You need to be mentally strong, and mentally prepared, and then no matter what the situation, you will be able to stay calm and rational. Two essential ingredients for a positive outcome in an emergency or ‘intense’ situation.

My advice to all sailors before putting to sea is, think through the risks, prepare for them physically and also mentally. What would you do in X situation? What would you do if Y happened? Put in place everything you can to both prevent it, but also to help make life easier if the situation does occur. If you’ve already thought it through, or envisaged it, then you’ll be one step ahead, and you’ll be calmer.

Equally if you are the skipper, or you are an experienced crew member, people will look to you for that ‘ calm ‘. If they’re scared, and they see that you’re calm it will help keep them calm. If they look to you and you’re riddled with fear, then they too will panic, and then poor decisions are made, chaos ensues, and frankly it can be incredibly dangerous.

Don’t panic, stay calm, be prepared for anything.

We carry two grab bags onboard, they had everything we needed (and more) in case of having to abandon to a life raft. Contents are as follows…

Bag 1 – This is a SOLAS B certified 50 litre waterproof grab bag containing the following:

• Category C 1st aid kit
• Thermal protective aids
• A sea anchor
• Buoyant orange smoke flare
• 3 x red had flares
• Waterproof SOLAS approved torch
• Water rations
• Food rations

Bag 2 – This is an additional 30l waterproof bag that we put together containing a collection of items that we thought may also be needed if we need to abandon ship. Contents are as follows:

• More food and water rations
• Handheld VHF radio (fully charged)
• Mini dry box containing AA and AAA batteries
• Waterproof pouch containing the passports of all onboard (collected at the beginning of an offshore passage)
• A waterproof torch
• A sharp knife
• Spare sanitary items
• Spare medication for anyone onboard
• A credit card
• Waterproof pouch containing all crew details (inc next of kin details and medical history)
• IP66 waterproof box containing a solar powered battery bank for phones and charging cables
• Sea sickness tablets
• Glow sticks

In addition to the above, our life raft comes complete with its own additional supplies. We stow our grab bags in an easy access position, underneath the chart table, at the bottom of the companionway steps.

On our yacht (like most yachts), the VHF antenna was at the top of the mast. When the mast came down we lost all radio range on our ships radio, and it also took out our AIS. So raising the alarm was challenging.

We carry an emergency antenna onboard, and at the very least I would recommend this. Albeit, it won’t be much help in an offshore dismasting, as the range is incredibly limited if you are unable to hoist to any significant height. We attempted to use it, but got no response from repeated May Day calls. We also pressed our DSC button, but got no response.

We used red parachute flares, which worked well in the cloudless sky. With a range of up to 40nm, there’s a good chance that they will be seen. Advice is to let one off, downwind, and then let another off 3 minutes later. We believe that one of the fishing vessels that came to our aid, was due to us letting the flares off.

We struggled to get outside help, so we eventually ended up pushing our ’emergency button’ on our Iridium Go Exec. This gave us sat comms, and ultimately the help we needed. This is an expensive system, but proved to be invaluable and is recommended if you are going any significant distance from land.

Onboard, we also have an EPIRB, although we’ve never had to use it. We also have a handheld VHF radio, which was incredibly useful when we had vessels close by that had come to our aid.

Onboard we had a set of bolt cutters. Ultimately these were clunky and inefficient. My advice would be to invest in hydraulic cutters, but also a portable angle grinder (and keep the battery fully charged).

We found it simpler to unscrew all of the bottle screws, and use knives to cut the lines when we were dismasted. This meant we could do it in a controlled and well thought out way, without the risk of highly tensioned cables suddenly thrashing across the deck and causing injury. One issue we came up against was that we had ‘taped’ our bottle screws to avoid clothing snags on the split pins. This proved time consuming to take off (even with knives), and we lost valuable time. ‘Taping’ bottle screws, although common, isn’t something I would recommend or do again.

For us, the whole mast came away from the deck and the mast head was balanced precariously over the starboard quarter (probably 4m under water). Both sails were unfurled and underwater (fully). We believe the forestay failed, but can’t be certain. We attempted to pull it back onboard, and even use winches, but it was impossible. The sheer weight, and size meant it couldn’t be done without potentially causing huge damage to the integrity of the hull (as the spreaders could have punched through).

Ultimately I don’t believe there was any way for us to save the rigging, without unnecessarily putting everybody at serious risk.

First thing was to just take stock – check everyone was ok. Stay calm, and slow down. I immediately jumped to ‘we must cut it away’, but the right thing to do was to stop and think. So that’s what we did. We took a minute to go over the steps we needed to take, and think through how the situation could escalate.

Rough steps we took in our dismasting were:

• Wake everyone onboard, with an instruction to stay calm, get dressed and get on deck with a life jacket on
• Secure the rig that was across the deck with mooring lines (tied to winches) to reduce the amount of banging and ‘give’ and to also stop it from fully going over in an uncontrolled way
• We made the decision to try and get help, as we were only 12nm from land, and so to have help with us when we cut the rig away and someone to tow us in would be useful
• Raised the alarm – we tried radio, this didn’t work as we’d lost radio range (due to antenna being submerged), we rigged the emergency antenna, but this gave little range as we could only get it about 2.5m high. Next we put up 2 parachute flares – we believe this got the attention of a fishing vessel (which came after about an hour). Then we pushed our Iridium Go Exec emergency button, this got us in touch with the Garmin Emergency Centre, and subsequently our shore contacts, who called the coastguard
• Help arrived by way of a helicopter and fishing boat, and we were instructed to start work on getting rid of the rig, which was semi submerged, with both sails fully underwater – we opted to undo the bottle screws, as it would give us more control, and was more manageable. This took about an hour. We then pushed it in
• We hooked up a tow line and were then towed ashore, and updated all shore contacts that we were safe
• At all times we were monitoring the crew for signs of shock etc, and after we got back to shore we made sure everyone was ok, and we had a chat/decompress as a crew before people got some sleep – I think this was important, as it allowed everyone to take stock and reflect on what had been quite a big event

I’m very pleased with how we handled the situation and especially how the crew came together. The decisions we made were well thought out, and well communicated. The team came together very well, with no panic, and no stress. The atmosphere onboard was incredibly calm. This helped the situation hugely.

We had all the right prep and plans in place beforehand to handle the situation (any emergency generally), and as such we had everything we needed throughout.

A lot of the below goes for any emergency, and for general safety. But in essence I recommend the following:

• Prep your shore contacts – make sure they know where you are, and certainly where you’re starting and finishing (and your eta). Give them full details of your boat (type of boat, length, hull colour, MMSI, call sign etc) and full details of crew onboard (including next of kin details). A lot of this will be asked for by the coastguard, and it will speed up the process of you getting help. We have a whatsapp group with our shore contacts, and so each time we go offshore we can send a topline plan and everything is in one place. For us, the shore contacts were the people that managed to get us the help we needed, and it helped hugely that they had all the details they needed.
• Choose your shore contacts wisely – When it comes to choosing your shore contacts, choose them wisely, and make sure they’re comfortable with this role – they could get a call in the middle of the night saying that you have been dismasted, and they may need to liaise with the coast guard, How will they cope? Will they stay calm? Will they be able to do the job? Choose wisely! Our shore contacts did an incredible job and stayed calm, although they both said it was a bit of an unnerving experience, they didn’t know how bad the situation was, and they had to wait several hours for an update, they didn’t get a wink of sleep that night, but nonetheless they did an amazing job, and we were very grateful for their help and level headedness
• Do a really thorough safety briefing – we had done just that, we were heading on a 600nm+ passage, and so spent a good couple of hours reminding the crew of the standing orders, where things were (emergency antenna, first aid, iridium go exec, grab bags etc) and going over safety procedures, etc. It paid off hugely. Everyone knew where to find things, so if instructed (i.e. I need a wrench, or I need the emergency antenna) anyone could get it instantly. Hodge is also obsessive with labelling and listing, and this also helped. So invest time in your safety briefing, it will pay dividends if needed
• Rig checks – when it comes to dismasting, obviously the condition of the rig plays a critical factor – get regular surveys and inspections, and if you know what you’re doing then do regular checks yourself. I had gone aloft and done a full inspection (with full photographic evidence) 3wks before. We have also had 2 surveys in the last 3 years. This gave us peace of mind that the rig was sound, and has also been very helpful in terms of the insurance. It obviously didn’t prevent the dismasting, but at least we know we did everything we could, and ultimately freak accidents do happen, all you can do is minimise the chances
• Have a decent set of bolt cutters onboard (ideally hydraulic – standard one’s won’t do much). Even better, invest in a portable angle grinder and keep it fully charged
• Think it through – plan and prepare for the worst, put in place a plan, have everything you need ready (and accessible). Think worst case scenario and work back from there – would you cope? Have you got everything you need? Is everything well located?
• Have well stocked grab bags to hand (see above) – keep crew passports in them (if going offshore), and any spare medication
• Have torches to hand – our incident happened at night, having a good supply of easily accessible head torches and a good (very high powered) spotlight was essential
• Carry a knife – we enforced that all crew had to carry a sharp sailing knife on them at all times, this paid off- we all used them when cutting the rig away
• Remember to write in your log book – time passes quickly – keep a note of what’s happening and when – it’s useful for communicating with the emergency services and post event, with the insurers
• Take pictures – sounds silly, but it has been a critical part of the insurance claim – the more pictures, the better. We were even asked if we had a picture of the rig in the water, after it had been cut away!
• Remember to eat and drink – hours can pass, and it’s essential to keep everyone hydrated and well fueled. So don’t forget to eat and drink, and make sure others do too. Adrenaline may stop them, but when the crash comes, it’s essential that they have good hydration and energy
• Finally, stay calm – I said it above, but not panicking can make all the difference in the outcome. Stay calm

Our insurance company GJW have been absolutely fantastic to deal with. Our assessor flew out to see us straight away, and has been incredibly professional and really helpful.

I mentioned above – keep a log book, take lots of pictures, have regular rig surveys, look after your rig, go aloft (if you know what you’re doing) and do your own regular checks – all of this will help you maintain your rig and prevent a dismasting, but it will also be helpful if the worst happens and you need to make an insurance claim.

Try not to listen to the ‘doom mongers’ and especially the keyboard warriors – they will tell you that insurers don’t pay out on rig failure, or that they dock 30%, etc etc . Block that out, focus on looking after your rig, doing the right thing in terms of maintenance etc, and should you find yourself in the position of having to claim, then depending on your policy you will get what is fairly owned under your policy terms, which for us has been a full payout.

The insurance process has been a ‘you pay, we pay’ system – so we have had to source all suppliers and quotes, put them to the insurance company, arrange the work, and then either we have paid and been reimbursed, or because of the size of the claim some of it has been paid direct. It’s quite hard work (especially when in a different country with a different language), but it’s fairly standard across marine insurance. We have opted to have the mast, standing and running rigging along with sails sorted in France, and then bring the boat home to do all of the other work with local suppliers, but it has been no easy feat to coordinate and organise!

Note: this feature is purely my own personal view and opinion. I am sharing this knowledge with the aim to help and assist fellow sailors in, what to expect, and how to prepare having been through the experience of a dismasting. This is not professional advice, and I will accept no liability for the knowledge I have shared here.

I would encourage anyone taking to the water to undergo proper training and seek the right qualifications through a recognised body for example the RYA or ASA.

You should always use a recognised and professional rigger when carrying out any work on your rig, and sail within your abilities, and on a well maintained and well-prepared yacht.

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3 thoughts on “what to do in a dismasting and how to prepare”.

• Pingback: Dismasted at sea! The story of an offshore dismasting

Thank you for your demoting story. Fascinating. I was wondering however what caused the failure? Was it a technical issue or the weather? Hard to imagine that it was weather. Many thanks. Simon

That is a very good question! Unfortunately we don’t know the answer to that, and never will because everything ended up 80m down, and we weren’t able to see what had gone wrong, as it was absolute carnage on deck. The only thing we do know is that it must have been something related to the forestay, as the mast came aft over the cockpit. So possibly an issue with the bolts attaching the stay to the mast (although in the rig check I did 3wks before, these were sound), or possibly the forestay itself. Hard to say. We had been through some heavy-ish weather 24hrs before, which lasted about 12hrs or so, and had been under a storm sail and 3 reefs in the main (at that point), but we were well clear of that, and were under full jib and a main with just 1 reef in it at the time. The conditions at the time, and in the hour leading up to the dismasting were absolutely fine, and at watch changeover we’d done our usual visual inspection ahead of the overnight watches, and everything looked as it should.

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Practical Boat Owner

• Digital edition

Snap, shackle and drop: coping with a dismasted sailing yacht

• Steve Hodges
• December 22, 2023

Steve Hodges and his fiancée Sam McClements’ second attempt at the RYA Yachtmaster Ocean passage is scuppered by a dismasted yacht

Credit: Dick Everitt

Purely for personal achievement reasons, my fiancée Sam and I are keen to achieve our Yachtmaster Ocean certificates to cap off a range of qualifications, including cruising instructor for Sam and Yachtmaster instructor for me.

Last year storm-force winds forced us to seek shelter in France, coming ashore for running repairs and rest, and therefore our 600-mile passage was broken into two voyages and not submittable for qualification.

Smithy and Jerry in the positions they were in when the mast came down. Credit: Steve Hodges

Undeterred, we set about trying to cross the Bay of Biscay again in June with two-thirds of the previous crew and our new friend, Jerry. Malcolm, Smithy, Sam and I were excited to put to bed the disappointment of the previous trip, Nigel and Charlie being otherwise engaged – though Nigel, was meeting us in A Coruña to skipper our Beneteau Cyclades 39.3 back to the Channel Islands where we intended to have a family holiday before sailing home.

Preparations

With Sam’s Clipper Round the World Race experience and both our time instructing at Elite Sailing in Chatham we are fairly risk averse and try to prepare for every eventuality.

We serviced the engine including all new filters , a new impeller and a complete replacement of the oils.

We replaced the mainsail with a new one from Resen Sails in Denmark, had her lifted for inspection, Sam serviced all the lifejackets , and conducted a top-to-toe check of the rigging from the bosun’s chair .

We also made additional purchases to last year’s upgrades:

• New storm jib , with a sleeve to go over the furling gear from e-sails
• New Seago Ocean liferaft with SOLAS B grab bag
• IridiumGO! Exec and upgraded subscription to PredictWind.

Equipped with our new gear , a fierce determination, and a tracking fan club (of three) we set off from Eastbourne on Thursday 29 June.

The boat looked great, felt fantastic to sail and the weather forecast was lively but fun.

We intended to beat ‘the Bay’ on round two.

Exhilarating start

Jerry, Smithy and I were on one watch, with Malcolm and Sam on the other and we settled into a routine with a 6+6+4+4+4 watch pattern, giving everyone the required number of sunsets, sun rises, shooting stars and dolphins along with affording Sam and me the time to do our celestial sights for our certification.

This watch system provides good rest periods as well as whole crew mealtimes together.

The first 24 hours aboard were standard stuff, the weather varied from Force 4 to Force 6 and progress was steady.

Ruby May ‘s voyage until the sailing yacht was dismasted

Sweepstakes for arrival ranged from Tuesday night to Wednesday evening. There was commercial shipping to dodge as we crossed the Channel but boat life was relaxed and fun.

By Friday afternoon the weather had picked up and we put up the new storm jib.

It was also heading at us from the west, slowing down progress, and we knew we needed to reach the top corner of France to make the turn for a three-day beam-reach across Biscay and into Spain.

So we put the engine on at 2,000rpm as we neared the French coast to point up a bit more.

Minor issues

After a few hours under motor, the engine overheat alarm came on and we could smell that something wasn’t right so we turned off the engine and I headed below.

Something had blocked the water inlet and stopped the cooling water from getting into the engine.

Upon shutting the seacock and taking off the impeller cover we could see that all the impeller fins had completely gone.

We fished some bits out of the pipework but the heat exchanger needed looking at.

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We replaced the impeller with a new one temporarily and proceeded to sail. We re-tested the engine and found an okay amount of water coming out of the exhaust so we ran it slowly and hoped for the best.

A second challenge emerged. While heading to his cabin, Smithy found water splashing up above the sole boards.

It’s quite a shallow part of the bilge next to the engine bay so there was no major panic, but we lifted the boards for inspection.

After a couple of hours down below, in fairly bumpy seas I discovered that when putting the pipes back on the pump, the clip around one of the hoses had broken and water was being pumped into the boat. Not ideal!

Port of refuge

Given the weather was a good Force 6+ and building, we decided to duck into Alderney for a few hours, anchor or get onto a mooring buoy and clean up the heat exchanger.

We could also dry out the bilges fully, ready for our main mission – the Bay. We arrived into Braye in fog, punchy winds but with the tide.

Glued to the chartplotter and the faint glimpse of the leading lights we made it into the harbour safely.

The helpful harbour staff in the RIB at Braye assisted us to a mooring buoy. She agreed that there was a Force 7 on the way and we put two lines around the buoy.

We ate, Sam and I stripped the engine down to get to the heat exchanger and spent an hour picking all the rubber out.

We then put it back together, fired it up and with a quick splutter the usual voluminous amount of water started pumping out the exhaust again.

We still don’t know what caused the initial overheating but we were pleased we carry spare impellers and a comprehensive tool kit.

Voyage resumed

Shortly before midnight on Friday, we headed out into the blustery wind, punching the tide for a couple of hours before altering course to port and shooting for the north-west corner of France.

The sailing was great, one large tack to clear Guernsey and we were making good speed in a reasonable direction.

We knew we would need one or two tacks to get ‘round the corner’ but then as the wind shifted slowly to north-west-ish we’d grab our beam reach and get to Spain in one tack.

Early Wednesday morning was still on! We were maintaining an average 6.5 knots.

Shortly before a 2000 watch change, the team tacked for the penultimate time, heading north back towards Blighty and we monitored the weather and tides to find the perfect moment for our last tack of the trip, ready for three days of straight sailing.

At just after 2300 boat time (2100 UTC) my watch was willing the boat along to see if we could get the final tack in before handover at midnight.

We were glued to the Axiom and PredictWind and discussing how best to make it past Ushant, inside the TSS but not too close to the challenging shoreline.

Just before 2330, as Jerry was on the helm, Smithy was sat on the high side of the cockpit and I was sat on the deck floor looking at the chartplotter, out of nowhere and with a quiet gracefulness that was totally unexpected, the mast, just, fell, down .

Clattering onto the starboard side wheel, guardrail, pushpit and partially into the water we were stopped dead in our tracks.

The foresail and furler were also in the water and for one to two seconds we were stunned.

Then, we all kicked into action. “Everybody on deck, lifejackets on please, as quick as possible!” was my request.

The first of two red parachute flares – both went unseen. Credit: Steve Hodges

Sam, resting in the saloon and Malcs asleep ahead of their midnight to 0400 stint, were up instantly. ‘What on earth..?’ was the expression on their faces.

Sam went below and came back with the two grab bags and handheld VHF , while Malcs, Smithy and Jerry did what they could to secure the rig and make sure things didn’t escalate with a punctured hull or anyone getting trapped.

We discussed options: is this a Mayday or a Pan Pan? There was no immediate danger to life, but it could escalate quickly with all the gear on the deck and in the water.

What was our position, were we in a ferry lane, and what further damage was being done? There was a lot of noise, was everyone safe, uninjured and in good health?

We were all focused on getting back to shore in one piece.

We were just under 10 miles from the French coast. I grabbed the emergency VHF antenna and replaced the connector for the one on the mast in the splitter.

Sam issued a Pan Pan but heard nothing back, She popped up a couple of red parachute flares, a few minutes apart and we listened for a call. Nothing.

We grabbed the IridiumGO! Exec from the chart table and, fearing that the condition could escalate, we hit the SOS button.

Malcs also tried making some calls on his mobile, sending a couple of WhatsApp messages to our friend, Deano, in the north of England.

The SOS button achieved a phone call on the satellite network from the Garmin Emergency Response centre in the US.

The signal was poor and the speaker was difficult to hear because of the wind, the noise of the rig grinding against the boat and the waves.

In a hurry: Steve and Sam on the pushpit with grab bags and Iridium ready to go. Credit: Steve Hodges

It was a frustrating few minutes as we battled for them to understand our location and our Lat and Long position which was clearly displayed on the Iridium screen.

The Iridium doesn’t send your position details or MMSI (and I hope they change it with a software update), it is no EPIRB , it just makes the call or sends a message to the IERCC and then initiates the emergency process which includes calling your shoreside contacts.

So while relaxing at home, my brother Dave received a call from Texas advising him that we had initiated an emergency protocol and did he know where we were this weekend?

Before we left, I had given our shoreside contacts the Satcomms number of the Iridium, a passage plan and access to the PredictWind tracking webpage, this turned out to be invaluable.

Dave made a call to us on the Iridium and despite the poor signal and background noise, his voice came on the speaker with his usual chilled out demeanour, “Yo, what’s up?” “Well it’s a bit tricky out here mate, we have been dismasted, we are all safe and uninjured, but we are currently at 48 degrees, 50 minutes decimal 76 north, and Zero Zero Four degrees, 20 minutes decimal 14 West and could really do with some help!”

The comms were broken and challenging but he had got it. And he was off to call 999 and get the UK coastguard onto the French SNSM.

At the same time, Malcs’ messages had got to Dean, who also called the coastguard .

Rescue support

It was a relief to know the emergency services were being made aware of our predicament.

Smithy stood in the cockpit holding the emergency VHF antenna aloft and Jerry continued to make adjustments to the lines to secure the rig.

Sam continued with the comms on the VHF now escalated to a Mayday and grabbed our bright spotlight to attract the attention of passing vessels.

Malcs kept Deano informed while helping Jerry with the rig.

We each gathered a few ‘extras’ in case we abandoned ship, wallets, warm clothes and I even managed to pop Sam’s sunglasses in a pocket.

Continued reassessment went on but we now had time for smiles and banter.

Smithy holding the VHF antenna with the fallen mast in the background. Credit: Steve Hodges

We were comforted by knowing help was on its way and there was a bright, full moon, but we were still a very little dot in a very large sea.

Then a welcome message came over the radio.

A French fishing boat called Azkarra made contact and was 20 minutes out from us.

Sam scanned the horizon with the spotlight and I kept an eye on the AIS which now had a visible range of only a couple of miles.

We soon saw their spotlight scanning in our direction and Sam reciprocated with enthusiasm.

Knowing that even if the worst was now to happen, the crew of Azkarra had followed the mariner’s code and were by our side was one of the most comforting feelings I have experienced at sea.

Via radio, the Azkarra let us know that the SNSM (French RNLI) and the French Navy were sending out a helicopter!

“Er, I’m not sure they need to do that, we’re all uninjured and in good spirits and there is probably something more valuable they could be doing with their time,” I responded. “They are coming!” Was the uninterested reply. “Fair enough,” I thought.

A second French fishing vessel, Le Tad , arrived and stood, sometimes a little too close, by our side relieving the crew of Azkarra of their duties.

Despite it being probably a few hours since the mast came down, it all felt like minutes.

As Le Tad kept watch over us we saw red flashing lights in the sky and heard the deep thud of rotor slap heading out towards us.

“ Ruby May , Ruby May this is the French Navy helicopter, over”. Not thinking that I should have left the comms to Sam who can speak French, I grabbed the Command mic from its bracket and responded. “Do you have a swim ladder?” they enquired, “Yes, but it is under the mast..” “OK, no problem.”

It felt harsh that we were all warm and dry and they intended to throw some poor fellow in the cold, dark, rolly sea to help us.

I was glad the ladder was out of action.

Helicopter heroes

Out of the helicopter descended the coolest man to grace the earth.

We stared in awe as they casually popped the winchman on the only two square metres of coachroof that did not have rigging or people on it.

He unclipped himself and the chopper headed up to a couple of hundred feet and lit us up with their spotlight.

Impressive doesn’t begin to do it justice. The winchman slid off his helmet, revealing chiselled cheeks and a groomed beard, grinned broadly with perfect teeth, and said “Bonjour!”

The French winchman heads back to his helicopter. Credit: Steve Hodges

Every member of the crew was bowled over.

He offered to airlift three of us, but we all preferred to stay together.

The lifeboat was on its way so we would wait for the tow , and all play a part in the recovery.

Our winchman was nonplussed, “no problem at all” and he took off his sling and removed his diving fins from around his waist. “You don’t need to stay with us, we’ll be fine,” I said. “It is fine, I have nothing else to do,” he replied. And he took his place in the cockpit with the Ruby May gang.

The lifeboat coming from L’Aber Wrac’h was about 30 minutes behind, our winchman was in communication with the helicopter above us and talking to the lifeboat and instructed us to jettison the rig for the tow.

Rig jettison

We knew it was coming but the prospect of cutting away the boat’s rig , sails, every bit of rope and wire, screw and bolt that we had lovingly put into Ruby May felt horrific. We set to work.

Sam, Smithy and Jerry worked on the lines and backstays and Malcs and I set to work with pliers on the shrouds and the forestay.

It was tricky with the lumpy sea and taut rig.

Time for a smile while the dismasted sailing yacht, Ruby May is under tow. Credit: Steve Hodges

We carry bolt cutters and got them out but with the rig under so much lateral tension at various points and the bottle screws all clearly available we decided to unscrew everything in a controlled way.

It took around 45 minutes, by which time the lifeboat was standing by, ready with the towline.

We sliced through the few remaining lines and the top half of our beautiful sailboat was sent 80m to the seabed.

The lifeboat crew moved in with the heaving lines and Sam got them on the cleats.

We pulled in the tow line and made a bridle looped over the windlass, cleats and out the bow rollers.

The SNSM lifeboat crew were super communicative, comforting and gave us a ‘five minute warning’ for the tow to begin.

Mastless Ruby May alongside the SNSM rescue vessel in L’Aber Wrac’h. Credit: Steve Hodges

Our temporary crew member donned his helmet, grabbed his bag, and sat on our remaining guardrail ready for his lift.

He gave Malcs, Jerry and Smithy in the cockpit a thumbs up and was gone.

Sam and I on the bow checked the tow rope one final time and then we were on our way, bound for L’Aber Wrac’h.

Sam grabbed the helm to help with the tow and Smithy fetched the bag of chocolate bars and we settled in for the three-hour slog home.

I had a siesta while the others sat up reflecting how lucky we were that no one had been injured or even killed, and how glad we were that it had not happened 150 miles offshore in the middle of the Bay of Biscay.

Lessons learned

• Rig check importance. We still have no idea what caused the rig to fail. It was less than three years since her last professional rig inspection and she’d had two thorough checks since then. This has given us the comfort of not having nagging doubts of what we’d have missed if Sam had not spent a couple of hours up the rigging before we left.
• Preparedness. Despite often sailing as a family and the boat being our second home, everything has its place on Ruby May . From the first aid kits, to tools, grab bags, EPIRB, bolt cutters, ship’s papers, passports and even chocolate bars, at no point were we hunting around looking for anything.
• Setting up the IridiumGO! Exec before leaving was invaluable. We did most of it at home using good connectivity and then tested it with the support of the PredictWind team on the boat before departure.
• Briefing shoreside contacts was useful although I had not shared a full crew list and the crew’s emergency contacts. I have since created ‘trip’ folders in OneDrive to share with emergency contacts moving forward.
• Prepped grab bags helped the calmness on board. We had passports, ship’s papers, a spare credit card with the PIN written on a fireproof waterproof folder. Sam also mandated that everyone carry a knife and head torch (at night) for the trip. This came in handy when we were cutting away lines and pulling out split pins in the rigging.
• Spare VHF antenna . Having the emergency one connected into the splitter helped with communications range, and having the splitter located in a place that was easy to access was helpful – I could connect the emergency antenna in a few seconds.
• Crew briefing was critical in our hour of need. Before we left, Sam did a full safety and boat brief, which discussed the route, anticipated weather forecast and safe havens. Each yacht has its nuances and sharing locations of everything, roles on board and expectations helped everyone to feel in control when the plan went off-piste.
• Insurance . The GJW Direct team have been incredibly helpful in getting things moving, Andrew for Lloyd Warwick has been great, we got Ruby May back at the end of the summer and the people at Iroise Greement, Incidence Sails and Z Spars UK have all been fantastic.
• Teamwork. We owe a debt of gratitude to our amazing crew, who are all signed up for Biscay 2024 – a voyage we’re hoping will be so boring all we’ll have to talk about is the tapas and vino in A Coruña!

Expert response

Neil Brinsdon, managing director of Advanced Rigging and Hydraulics operating from the Hamble River, and Spencer Rigging in Cowes, Isle of Wight, comments:

“The integrity of the rig can be affected by many factors, such as the age of rigging, miles sailed, stresses on designed safety factors or tuning discrepancies, environmental conditions, and if it is subjected to any additional events, such as knock-downs , or crash gybes.

Neil Brinsdon, managing director of Advanced Rigging and Hydraulics

“We don’t know in this case which factor, or factors, may have contributed to the catastrophic failure, but it is good to read that some comfort was given to Ruby May ’s crew by conducting a thorough rig check before their passage, as any prudent skipper would advocate, and that they had engaged with professional inspections and surveys at regular intervals. While it was not sufficient to prevent the dismasting in this case, it will have been an asset to the consequent insurance claim in proving that due diligence was carried out, and a testament to why keeping a detailed, up-to-date maintenance log with photographs is important.

“The crew understandably found cutting away the rig very difficult with bolt cutters, which are inefficient on 1×19 wire and cumbersome to use. Carrying hydraulic cutters is an effective (but expensive) option; wire cutters e.g. Felco C16 cutters, or a hacksaw with multiple blades (at least a dozen) with 32 teeth per inch are other choices. Battery-powered disc cutters are by far the easiest but be aware of loads and movement in the swell. Try different options out on your largest piece of wire and consider if your crew is strong enough to use them and the likely conditions in which they may be needed. Like many safety items, they will be an investment you never hope to use, but if you do, you’ll be pleased to have made a quality purchase that can make all the difference in an emergency.”

Enjoyed reading Snap, shackle and drop: coping with a dismasted sailing yacht?

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How do you manage your sailboat when dismasting?

Accidental dismasting can quickly degenerate into a shipwreck if it is not well managed, or if bad luck gets in the way. It is better to have thought about it beforehand so as not to find yourself unprepared in the situation. Here's how this scenario can unfold.

This winter the Class 40 Crosscall was overturned by a wave off the Azores . The boat made a 360 and the mast pierced the cockpit creating a huge waterway . The boat remained between two waters for 11 hours before the two skippers were rescued by a Portuguese Navy helicopter.

Prevent to avoid dismasting

In order for a sailboat to dismast, one part of the rigging must be loose. When turning over, the pressure on the rotating mast underwater is such that it has a high chance of breaking. However, the majority of dismastings are due to broken cables or crimps. Insurers also advise, when not required, to change the standing rigging every ten years.

In addition to the crimps, the forestay, which is hidden by the furling tube, should be regularly monitored. In case of malfunction of the reefing-furling system, it can become dislodged. At the very least, a visual inspection of the rigging at the beginning and end of the season remains a good means of prevention.

What to do if the sailboat still dismasts?

The first thing to do is to ensure the safety of the crew . If no one is injured, you will not have to take any additional risks, as you will not be able to recover a man overboard with a mast hanging in the water. If you are within VHF range of the shoreline, try to notify rescue. Be careful, often the VHF antenna is placed at the masthead on a sailboat . It is very likely to be damaged. Call instead with a portable VHF . Notify CROSS of your situation. Then it's the safety of the boat that has to be taken care of.

Usually the mast breaks at one spreader stage. It is important to avoid at all costs that pieces of the mast ram against the hull. Depending on the sea state, you may therefore be forced to free the entire rigging and let it sink. Also resist the urge to start the engine as there is a high risk of getting a piece of the propeller.

Cut the shrouds that hold the mast to the deck with a pair of guy wire cutters or, failing that, a hacksaw. A good knife is often useful for cutting the genoa which is wound on the forestay. This will allow you to reach the furling line, which you will then have to cut as well. In the water the mast will act on the boat like a floating anchor , stabilising the daggerboard.

If you decide to retrieve it, secure it as soon as possible using the halyards and hoist it using the winches. Be aware that it can be very difficult to get it back on board with the sails still furled. Every situation is different, it will be up to you to decide whether it is worth saving all or part of the rigging and sails.

Once the housework is done, you can try to go home on your own, or wait for help if this is not possible.

Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Dismasted offshore: how one man got his boat home

• Katy Stickland
• February 8, 2022

When Jock Hamilton’s 33ft Wauquiez Gladiateur dismasted offshore, 500 miles from land, he created a jury rig using a Laser dinghy mast, sails and oars, before sailing 1,500 miles home

Jock arriving home in Tighnabruaich after sailing 1,500 miles under jury rig. Credit: Jock Hamilton

Bang! I turned around just in time to see the mast of the boat toppling into the water over the starboard side, writes Jock Hamilton .

Bother! I’m 500 miles from anywhere in the North Atlantic. Is it causing damage? These thoughts passed through my mind as I clambered on deck to assess the situation and to attempt to free the mast from the boat.

Heading up the port side, I noticed that a broken deck fitting , to which the port lower shroud had been attached, was the cause.

The boom was largely on the starboard side deck; the mast was ‘sawing’ back and forth across the port guard rail – now an inch above the deck but still taking the strain.

The weather was moderate, about 20 knots of wind with 3m of sea or swell. Having been beating into it, now that we were lying still, conditions seemed a little less severe.

Jock’s route showing where he was dismasted offshore and his return voyage home. Credit: Maxine Heath

Freya , a Wauquiez Gladiateur, was now sitting across the wind, with the mast acting as a sea anchor to windward, and rolling quickly.

As I was at the port cap shroud, I disconnected this by pulling the small split pin out of the rigging pin with my multitool – a fixture on my belt for 21 years – and knocked out the big pin.

Then I crawled forward – carefully due to the rolling and lack of anything above deck level to hang onto.

The inner forestay was simple to detach from the highfield lever, and quickly despatched.

I thought I should detach the boom and try to salvage what I could. The situation seemed stable.

It was relatively easy to cut the leech reefing points, stick a figure of eight in the ends, cut the lazy jacks and cut the sail tape attaching the clew to the outhaul slider.

Under full sail with the jury rig set up after being dismasted offshore. Credit: Jock Hamilton

Moving to the gooseneck I cut the mainsail tack lashing and removed the pin on the gooseneck fitting.

Stupidly I took the rod kicker off at the boom, which meant I lost it with the mast.

With hindsight, I could have taken it off at the mast with a bit of careful work but it was a couple of feet in the air and moving up and down as the boat rolled.

Going aft I thought about taking the pin out from the bottom of the hydraulic backstay tensioner but decided; ‘No, save it’.

This involved taking some seizing wire from the bottlescrew and unscrewing that.

Dismasted offshore: Mast jettison

It was time to get rid of the mast. The forestay fitting went without trouble, again the multitool being adequate firepower for the task.

The mast was now held only by the starboard cap and lower shroud.

The lower went easily enough but I had placed white plastic pipes over the cap shrouds to assist in tacking the genoa and this still covered the deck fitting – it was bent and crushed over the guardrail and prevented me from accessing the attachment point.

Timing the effort, I pushed the bent gutter pipe out over the guardrail enough to access the deck fitting and wire. I had to be careful as I was close to the mast foot which was moving up and down as Freya rolled, threatening a possible injury.

The mast cleared from deck. Note the missing deck fitting, bottom left. Credit: Jock Hamilton

I’d heard in the past that the final fitting would have tension on it and needed to be cut; I used bolt croppers, a hacksaw and a grinder.

In the event, however, it seemed to be more practical to knock the pin out – the same as the others – and time it with the roll of the boat to starboard in order to release it.

With a final check that nothing surprising was likely to happen, I pulled the split pin out, waited for the tension to come off the wire, and knocked the pin out.

The mast slipped, caught momentarily with a cleat over the guardrail, requiring me to lift it slightly, then slid slowly over the side and disappeared into the depth of the North Atlantic.

It was time for a cup of tea and a think.

I was about 500 miles from Halifax in Nova Scotia and 1,500 miles from both home and my intended destination of Newport where four of us, who had had the OSTAR cancelled at the last minute, were heading in the NOSTAR using the same course and date as the original event.

I had in fact noted crossing the halfway distance only around an hour before losing the mast.

Hasty retreat

The sensible course of action seemed to be to sail home. This would be downwind, with the North Atlantic drift and would be most convenient for repairs.

After tea this plan still seemed to be the best. There was a gale forecast for the evening; it was now 1445 ship’s time and the sea and wind were building.

It would be foolish to make a jury rig until the gale had passed through.

I wondered if we’d manage downwind in the conditions without any sail, so disconnected the tiller from the self steering and pulled it up, holding it strongly as the rolling applied forces on the rudder.

The boom rigged as the new mast. The vertical oars helped align it prior to hoisting. Credit: Jock Hamilton

Little happened initially, then the bow inched around and once it had moved some degrees downwind we started to move ahead.

Once moving she turned downwind, I steered for a few minutes to get a feel and we were soon up to three knots so I reconnected the vane self steering and went below.

I then spoke with my sister and Graham, a friend ashore posting blogs on my behalf at www.beaglecruises.com – my Iridium aerial was on the pushpit.

I reassured them that I was fine and that Freya had no damage other than one stanchion broken. I had loads of food, fuel, water and gas.

I considered whether I was being foolish not asking for help. But even with hindsight, I am convinced this would have been the wrong option; getting off Freya , particularly in poor weather would be dangerous and it would be excruciating to have Freya turn up off the west coast of Europe some time later.

Scuttling her would involve getting safely within reach of help and then opening a seacock .

However the idea of getting nicely alongside a big ship – the likeliest scenario – and hoping that we’d sit there happily whilst going below to open a seacock seemed optimistic.

Conditions would make it dangerous for a ship to launch a rescue boat, and having put myself in danger I had no wish to endanger anyone else.

Some 36 hours passed, making three to six knots downwind in a gale with some impressive seas.

My fellow voyager, Ertan Beskardes , on his Rustler 36 Lazy Otter , was knocked down three times and his windvane steering was washed away.

Two days after the mast loss I tried making a jury rig using a Laser mast and sail I’d brought in case it came in handy.

Up on deck I heard the VHF radio come to life, knowing from my satellite comms that Ertan was close, I went below and we had a chat.

He was heading for the Azores for repairs and only a few miles away. Getting aboard him might have been an option but being a bit gung ho I was optimistic about making it home.

Dismasted offshore: Mast foot arrangement on the jury rig. Credit: Jock Hamilton

It was great to speak to each other despite the inauspicious circumstances. Signing off I continued with the Laser mast.

It was easy to secure the lower half of the mast on deck but trying to do the same with the whole mast and sail proved tricky.

It was apparent that the old dinghy sail was not going to manage a journey of the length anticipated.

I needed a mast to which substantial sails could be added or removed as conditions warranted. This meant rigging the boom or spinnaker boom as a mast.

Continues below…

Crash Test Boat – Dismasted

Extra photographs from Yachting Monthly’s unique series of disasters on our crash test boat, this time it’s Dismasting

“We watched as the mast and sails fell into the water”

Alejandro Perez describes the moment when ARC yacht Garuda was dismasted 600 miles from land

Lessons learned from abandoning ship mid Atlantic

Solo skipper Billy Brannan lost his home when his 34ft yacht Helena was knocked down, rolled and dismasted during an…

Why you should regularly check your deck fittings

What’s really going on under your deck fittings? Ben Sutcliffe-Davies investigates the hidden weaknesses

As the boom was more substantial and had several useful fittings I opted for this, even though it was shorter.

I lashed the dinghy oars vertically, either side of the sprayhood, to keep the boom on the sprayhood so that, before hoisting, it had some angle to the horizontal.

I attached rope shrouds via a convenient hole in the end fitting on a bight. I have holes in my toerail but because they are quite sharp I added large galvanised shackles to these (from my drogue ) to reduce wear.

As my intention was to eventually have a gunter-style rig, I split the backstay to allow the sail to sit in the angle between the two backstays.

The backstays proved too much for the convenient hole so I put a clove hitch around the mast, above three sliders that I’d moved to the ‘mast’ head to hold a block for the headsail – the top one for the block, the other two to help hold it in position – with an end coming down either side.

Having rigged the shrouds and backstays to what I guessed to be the correct length, I clipped on and pulled on the headsail halyard rigged from the bow roller through the head block to my hands whilst holding the ‘mast’ foot on the deck fitting with my foot.

The tri-sail rigged upside down as a jib. Credit: Jock Hamilton

The mast came up to about 40º, which was fine, but there was quite a force on the halyard still and I needed to secure it. As I moved forward, the safety line came tight and I had to stop.

Pulling hard on the lanyard and wiggling around I just about managed to get a couple of turns onto the windlass before shuffling aft again.

I slackened off the backstays, tightened the halyard and repeated this until the ‘mast’ was vertical.

The gooseneck fitting went over a vertical plate on my deck step and was held in place by bolts and spacers to stop it slipping forward or aft.

I’d attached a forestay via a shackle in the convenient hole on the boom, on a bight, so with this and the shrouds tightened, I now had a mast!

The bights on the shrouds proved impossible to ‘refresh’ without dropping the mast, but the forestay worked well.

Sailing home

Calculations suggested my storm tri-sail would fit between the bow roller and masthead so I hoisted it.

Unfortunately the clew sat soggily on the deck because of the low angle of the new forestay.

However, hoisting it upside down proved successful and worked well downwind after testing it out with sheeting points.

A couple of days later, with the wind more on the beam, I pop-riveted a couple of eyelets to half of the Laser mast, lashed the storm jib to this and hoisted it as a main sail, gunter-rig style, which worked fine but blanked the headsail downwind.

With this rig I could sail much like a square rigger; she sat happily from 70º to the apparent wind and I had to ditch one of the sails above 130º or so apparent.

Initially I doused the mainsail downwind but soon learned that it was easier and more efficient to douse the headsail.

This is how I sailed home. I was very lucky in that the wind was mostly favourable, and I was mostly heading straight home.

We averaged 80 miles per day with a maximum of 109 miles.

This was not dissimilar to my mileage made good outbound – our day runs had been better but not always in the right direction.

Jock Hamilton, son of The Restless Wind author Peter Hamilton, has spent most of his life at sea in the Merchant Navy where he currently works as a captain on anchor- handling supply ships. He had a few years working as a bush pilot in southern Africa and did some time with the Royal Marines as a reservist. He is a keen yachtsman and sailed around the world as captain on Blue Leopard . He is intending to spend future summers showing holidaymakers some of the delights of the West of Scotland through Beagle Cruises, using his new yacht Yemaya , a Bowman 49.

I had to stitch up the headsail a couple of times due to wear along the foot – previously the leech – although I never identified why the wear was occurring, it always appeared to be clear of the pulpit.

With no proper mast the motion became very fast, with a roll period of around three seconds.

This was very uncomfortable and generated fast cyclic loads on the rudder whose bearings I worried about without managing to think of a way to alleviate the stresses.

The stove moved so quickly it kept blowing itself out.

I never walked on deck once the mast was down owing to the motion, although I did occasionally stand whilst hanging onto the mast or shroud.

After the first couple of days, as I was already under storm canvas and sailing downwind, I actually had a more relaxing time than I’d had sailing with a full rig upwind and banging into the sea.

Upwind, green water washed over the decks too, with some inevitably finding its way down below despite blanked vents.

I read and played with recipes sent from Hungary and amused myself baking bread; I’d not found the time for these activities on the way out.

NOSTAR casualties

Of the four of us who set off only one made it to Newport and all sustained damage. I wouldn’t say conditions were particularly bad, more unpleasant, and the constant wear and banging whilst going upwind was going to find and exploit any weakness.

The fitting that failed was an eye bolt; whilst sailing home I was kicking myself for not checking it prior to departure.

Once secure on my home mooring, I withdrew it. It had broken clean across with no sign of corrosion , so I don’t believe a visual inspection would have helped.

The voyage home took 18 days and I received a big welcome with a flotilla of boats and a pier lined with friends waving flags.

It was really touching.

Dismasted Offshore: Lessons Learned

• Check all fittings: This may be difficult – withdrawing deck fittings – but will give peace of mind.
• Salvage: It would have been simple to release the rig without saving the boom and, at the time, I didn’t think I needed it for my jury rig, but it later proved invaluable. Anything saved may be useful if you are dismasted offshore but also won’t need replacing; new stuff is very expensive.
• Careful communications: I emailed my boat insurance company and mentioned the transatlantic race. Whether we were officially racing, with no committee, Notice of Race, handicapping agreement, start sequence and so on, may have been moot, however they took this as proof and reduced the claim accordingly. Also consider what people ashore may do; I stipulated I did not need assistance and didn’t want the Coastguard alerted.
• Adapt: I optimistically thought that taking a dinghy mast and sail would be enough to get me home if I was dismasted offshore. I had to adapt my plans after thought and ideas from friends ashore to create a rig to which substantial sails could be added or removed as conditions warranted.
• Plan: Consider the worst-case scenarios. Having things that ‘might come in handy’ was a great help. I lost the windvane from my self steering early on; having a spare was invaluable.
• Replacement cost: Replacing the mast, furler, sails, rigging , radar, wind instrument, lights, winches , cleats and ropes adds up quickly. I had my rig and sails insured for £15,000 whilst replacement cost, new, is more than double that. Insuring a boat for what she cost second-hand may not be realistic.
• Advice from my Father: In my father’s book The Restless Wind , he states: ‘remember the strength of your rig is the strength of the weakest bit of it. Though it’s very heroic to bring your boat in safely after she has been dismasted or half wrecked, it is far more pleasant when she hasn’t.’

Enjoyed reading Dismasted offshore: how one man got his boat home?

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Safety at Sea: Dismasted on the Atlantic

• By Joanna Hutchinson
• Updated: January 2, 2019

Prepare yourself,” called Micha as he scrambled past, thrusting one arm through his foul-weather jacket as he dashed out into the cockpit. The wind whistling past the hull began to race faster and my heartbeat increased as I hurriedly stored the hot rope cutter and needles I’d been using to make new curtains, grabbed my coat and headed for the companionway. Moments later, my head popped out through the hatch just in time to see the 65-foot wooden mast from our 93-year-old classic yawl , Pantagruel , crash over the starboard bow like a felled tree.

Timberrrrrr!

In this second, our world and all our plans changed completely. It didn’t feel real. I half believed that if I closed my eyes and reopened them, the mast would still be intact and we would be sailing normally. I didn’t know how to respond. I could barely look at Micha, knowing that after owning the boat for 20 years, one of his worst nightmares had come true.

What now? My thoughts were hazy, not willing to accept our new reality. We were 10 days into our doublehanded Atlantic crossing from St. Maarten to the Azores, and still 600 nautical miles away from land. How will we continue? Will we be safe? How will we get to land? Will it be with or without Pantagruel ? We’d used up most of our fuel already, so motoring was not an option.

The squall didn’t last long. The wind died down and the sun came out, painting a surreal picture as we gazed in disbelief at the jagged edges of our broken spar stabbing at a blue sky. Micha walked over to examine the devastation, his face set like stone. After a few moments, he sprang into action. “We need to cut away the rigging from the mast and set it free from the boat before it damages the hull,” he said. There was no way to get it back on board with just the two of us, and leaving it on a long line and towing it behind would be too dangerous, especially if the weather turned. Besides, it would be hard to make progress.

Micha disappeared down below and ­reappeared with giant wire cutters, wrenches and other tools. Reluctantly, we got to work, clipping and snapping away at any rigging attaching the mast to the boat. It was heartbreaking cutting through the strong lines and wires. We flinched with each snip, as if amputating a limb. We even got out the angle grinder to cut through some of the heaviest-duty shrouds. It was devastating work. Before I let go of the genoa sheet, releasing our newest sail into the ocean, I called to Micha, “Shall we try to save this one?”

“Just cut it away,” he sighed — something he’d later regret.

We cut the mainsail away but worked hard to keep the boom on board. The mast, rigging and sails dragging in the water acted like a sea anchor. The moment we cut the last piece away, we instantly noticed a big change in the movement of the boat as we began rolling wildly in the North Atlantic swell. We wished later that we’d been brave enough (and had the energy) to pump up the dinghy and motor to the top of the mast, which was still floating, and rescue the genoa and the new shrouds.

By the time we finished and were finally completely free of the mast and everything attached to it, the sky had already grown dark, and we gave up for the evening. Down below, I numbly started making dinner, more out of habit than out of hunger, while Micha sketched diagrams of a jury rig. I’d been imagining being rescued by another ship or even a helicopter! Meanwhile, Micha had been envisioning ways to get Pantagruel back to safety.

The mast had snapped just above the gooseneck, and his plan involved raising the boom, which was 23 feet long, to use as a replacement. Nevertheless, that evening, we decided to set off the distress alert on the VHF radio.

Totally drained, we didn’t have much of an appetite and nibbled at our food as we analyzed the day’s events. The wind had been blowing at Force 5, or around 20 knots, from forward of the port beam, and we’d been sailing closehauled before the squall had hit. As usual, we were worried about being late to meet our next crew waiting for us in the Azores, and so we had all our sails up: main, mizzen and two headsails, including our 970-square-foot genoa, in order to be as fast as possible. We were also behind with jobs, and had left our windvane steering while we were both busy down below, popping our heads up once in a while to check on everything.

Our cutter-rig headsails were hank-ons, and required one of us to go out onto the bowsprit to lower them. In big seas and strong winds, this was not always an easy task. Our tactic was to steer downwind to reduce the power in the sails in order to drop them. On this occasion, when the squall hit and the wind picked up, the strain on the mast when trying to bear away had been too much, and the mast had come down before we’d had a chance to release the mainsheet. For a mast to collapse, there only needs to be one weak point. In our case, it had been the 6-foot-long shroud chainplate, which was bolted through the planks on the inside of the hull on the port side. It had been pulled out of position and no longer supported the mast. We debated later whether our rope ladder, allowing crew to climb up the shrouds to spot shallows — or for the crew to jump off into the water — had put considerable extra strain on the chainplate, weakening it over the years.

Without its mast, the boat was rolling helplessly, and I don’t think either of us slept a wink that night as we clung to the mattress and listened to each individual spice jar slide back and forth on the shelf.

The next morning, we received a ­response to our distress call on the VHF from a tanker 20 miles away. At first, we simply asked for a weather forecast, which luckily sounded relatively benign. The tanker pressed us as to why we’d sent a distress signal, asking if there was anything else they could do to help. We explained our situation and said we could use some fuel. We did a quick mental calculation: 600 nautical miles to go; our motor uses 1.3 gallons of diesel an hour, giving us a speed of 6 knots. We decided 132 gallons should be enough to get us to the Azores. To our surprise, they were happy to oblige, and merely asked what kind of fuel we needed — it turned out they were a tanker transporting oil!

They kindly diverted their course to head in our direction and asked us if we would be OK to receive the fuel in 55-gallon barrels that they could crane down from the tanker deck. There would be no chance of going alongside in this swell, so our only option was to inflate our dinghy to collect the barrels.

It was a good feeling to know that someone was out there and they were coming to help. Micha asked if I wanted to leave the boat at this point, and said he’d understand if I’d rather return to land with the tanker. Not wanting to leave him on his own, I declined. The weather had been relatively calm since the mast had fallen, and I didn’t sense we were in danger.

Feeling relieved that help was on its way, we discussed methods for getting the fuel barrels on board. We decided to use two lines, and wrap one end of each to the winches on either side of the cockpit. We’d run the other ends along each side of the deck to the middle of the boat, and make a loop in both the free ends. The loops would be hung off the port side, amidships, and then looped over each side of a barrel in the dinghy. Winching in each line carefully, the barrel could be rolled horizontally up the side of the boat and onto the deck.

Less than an hour later, we saw the tanker, Carpe Diem II, looming on the horizon. It grew steadily bigger until it was just a couple hundred yards away. It was exciting and frightening at the same time to see such a huge vessel heading straight for us — the kind of scenario we usually try to avoid!

Micha jumped into the dinghy and motored over to the side of the tanker where the barrel was being craned down. He looked so vulnerable in our little inflatable next to the 557-foot-long tanker, whose sides were rolling up and down at least a dozen feet in the swell. I watched in disbelief as the barrel was lowered from the 82-foot-high deck, swinging back and forth as the tanker rocked about. I was terrified it would knock Micha on the head as he tried to grab hold and unhook it at the exact moment it hit the dinghy floor. We are extremely grateful for the great skill of the tanker crew, who positioned the dinghy, barrels and crane.

Back at Pantagruel , Micha tipped the barrel on its side and slipped the loops from the two ropes we’d prepared around each end. My job was to leap from side to side of the cockpit, winching in each line bit by bit as Micha called out, “Port, starboard, port,” ensuring that the barrel was rolled up horizontally and not left to fall into the water. The motion from the waves caused the dinghy to bump into the barrel, sometimes knocking it out of the loops and back into the dinghy. Micha roared in frustration as he tried to reposition the barrel to restart the winching process.

Once the first barrel was safely on board, we repeated the procedure for barrel number two. This time, while trying to winch the barrel on board, the dinghy bashed into it as it was halfway up the side, causing it to fall into the water. Micha’s screams got louder, and I thought silently, What else can go wrong? Can we just forget this barrel, and get another one? But Micha had already got the oars out and was starting to paddle after the floating barrel. I put Pantagruel in gear and motored slowly after him until he’d got the barrel back in the dinghy and we began the winching process once more.

We repeated this procedure one last time (minus the paddling). The guys aboard the tanker now lined the rails to watch our progress. Afterward, Micha visited the bridge of the ship and was given the opportunity to call home to explain the situation and to pass on a message to our next crew.

Both back on board, complete with three fuel barrels, we began the task of siphoning the diesel into our tanks as the ship slowly disappeared into the distance. Several hours later, our tanks were full once again. However, with wind and the waves dead on the nose, our predicted 6 knots headway was more like 4 knots, which would leave us short of fuel to make the 600 nautical miles to land.

The next day, we turned the engine off and set to work on Micha’s jury rig. The most difficult part was figuring out how to raise the boom up as a mast. We put our two headsail poles together as shear legs on the foredeck, with a line attached from the top of the poles to the end of the boom. As we lowered the poles, they brought the boom up to a vertical position. Before raising the boom, we attached all the necessary standing and running rigging.

It was growing dark by the time we’d finished, and I persuaded Micha to wait until daylight before trying to hoist a sail. I was greeted the next morning by the strange sight of the head of our staysail fluttering past the coach-house window. Our jib was now acting as a mainsail without a boom, with the tack of the sail at the top of the new mast and the head reaching back as far as the cockpit. We were sailing again!

We hoisted another jib upside down, with the tack again at the top of the new mast and the head at the end of the bowsprit. We tied the head in a knot to reduce the length so we could still use the hanks to attach the sail to the new forestay.

We were therefore able to hoist four sails once more, including the mizzen and mizzen staysail. Our maximum speed with our new rig was about 4 knots and we could only sail at about 80 degrees to the apparent wind, but all in all, it wasn’t too bad.

In this manner we were able to half sail, half motor our way to the Azores. There we had a new sail made to fit our jury-rigged mast, and found the situation so stable that we kept the rig all the way to Germany.

In the end, we weren’t much slower than many other boats sailing across the Atlantic around the time Pantagruel was built, and with all the other systems on the boat functioning well, we didn’t feel like we were in a particularly dangerous situation. The journey took two weeks longer than originally planned, but luckily, we had plenty of food on board!

We are now sailing once more on the Atlantic Ocean, with a new mast standing tall, on our way to complete a circumnavigation aboard Pantagruel .

Micha Sinzel has nine Atlantic crossings and many other sea miles in his wake, and has owned *Pantagruel for more than 20 years. Joanna Hutchinson began sailing seriously six years ago, and recently earned her RYA Yachtmaster rating. Together, they are circumnavigating to celebrate Pantagruel’s 100th birthday.*

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Sailor Rescued At Sea After Dismasting During Round-The-World Race

Scott Neuman

India's Abhilash Tomy gestures on his boat Thuriya as he sets off from Les Sables d'Olonne Harbour on July 1 at the start of the solo around-the-world "Golden Globe Race" ocean race in which sailors compete without high technology aides such as GPS or computers. Jean-Francois Monier/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

India's Abhilash Tomy gestures on his boat Thuriya as he sets off from Les Sables d'Olonne Harbour on July 1 at the start of the solo around-the-world "Golden Globe Race" ocean race in which sailors compete without high technology aides such as GPS or computers.

A solo yachtsman whose sailboat was rolled and dismasted in an Indian Ocean storm during a round-the-world race, has been rescued four days after calling for help.

Abhilash Tomy , a 39-year-old commander in the Indian navy, was taken from his smashed boat, Thuriya, approximately 1,900 miles west of Australia by a French fisheries patrol boat.

Tomy rescued safely @nsitharaman @pmo @Australian_Navy @DefenceMinIndia @ggr2018official @SpokespersonMoD pic.twitter.com/G3z7mlLGu3 — SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) September 24, 2018

"Tomy was taken out of his yacht on a stretcher. He is conscious, and he is safe," an Indian navy spokesman Captain D.K. Sharma told reporters.

The Two-Way

Around the world in 42 days: frenchman sets new sailing record, man found after 137 days adrift in sailboat. and it's not his first rescue.

Tomy was participating in the Golden Globe non-stop, unassisted, round-the-world race, a revival of a famous 1968 race. Participants shun modern electronics, such as GPS, for navigation and instead use sextants and celestial navigation to find their position at sea.

In the original Golden Globe race, several participants were forced to quit, one refused to finish despite being in the lead and another died by suicide after stepping off his boat. Tomy's two-masted ketch is a replica of Suhaili, the boat that ultimately won the race.

Of the 18 sailors who entered this year's Golden Globe, Tomy and seven others have dropped out. One other boat was also dismasted in the same storm that damaged Tomy's.

The BBC reports that "Tomy was able to communicate using a texting unit, after his satellite phone was broken. He managed to send an initial message saying he has a severe back injury and was immobilised, unable to eat or drink."

Since the first report of Thuriya's dismasting on Friday, rescue efforts had been underway by India and other countries.

The Indian navy spokesman was quoted by NDTV as saying that Tomy sent a "ping" with his Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, or EPIRB, when aircraft approached his position.

Correction Sept. 24, 2018

A previous version of this story used quotes from Golden Globe race organizers that were wrongly said to refer to Abhilash Tomy. The statements were in regard to a different sailor forced to drop out of the race.

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Are Masts Getting Too Skinny, Too Fragile?

When a marine surveyor reported three boats dismasted while sailing with headsail alone, a lot of people began to wonder why..

Dear Editor:

Some time ago you published a letter from a marine surveyor who said he’d seen three boats whose masts failed when sailing under jib alone. Subsequently, there were in Mailport quite a few letters from curious readers. But you never did settle the issue of whether (or with what kind of rig) it is safe to sail with headsails only.

Leo Niemeier Miami, Florida

You’re right. It all started when readers like David Q. Wark, of Clinton, Maryland; Paul Jay Walchenback, of Seattle, and Dr. Robert Gillette, of Poland, Ohio, joined in a Mailport discussion about our editorial extolling whisker poles.

That’s when a marine surveyor, David Stainton, of Cranberry Island, Maine, jumped in with his warning to “never sail under jib alone if your boat has single lower shrouds.” Stainton said he’d surveyed three such boats with broken masts.

Since then, other readers have offered comments. Among them: Stan Spitzer, of Edenton, North Carolina; Steven A. Gabovitch, of Sharon, Massachusetts; Fred Hoheisel, of Detroit, and John Tesoriero, of Florham Park, New Jersey.

Some readers said they have for years sailed often with jib only and that for downwind sailing, especially in heavy air, a headsail will tow you home like an arrow, with minimal steering required. A couple of readers said they’ve sailed spinnaker-only many times.

Several readers pointed out that it is common, of course, on ocean-going cruisers to use twin headsails only, with the main stowed.

However, the simple question on the table is: Is it safe to sail under jib alone? With what rig? On what boat?

What Evolution Produced On most sailboats, a forestay, backstay and two upper shrouds position and hold in place the tip of the mast…but are no help in countering the compression loads working on the mast. In fact, the stays create the compression load. Any stayed mast tries to get out the bottom of the boat if it rests on the keel or through the deck if deck-mounted. Unstayed masts are different.

The forestay and backstay provide no control for the middle of the mast. The uppers provide some athwartship support via the spreaders, but very little support fore and aft.

To control the middle of the mast, most boats have two sets of lowers.

With the mast’s base and tip locked in position and the middle restrained by the lowers, the mast is well supported. It can be bent, raked or straightened…but it takes time, thought and patience.

With single lowers in the same plane as the mast, a thin bendy mast can flex fore and aft. If the shrouds (and spreaders) lead a bit aft, the middle of the mast can bow aft. It also can “pump,” which like anything uncontrollably repetitious is very bad. Keeping the mast in check (to resist or control compression bending) becomes the task of the double lower shrouds.

The geometry is all triangular, which is structurally very powerful. Witness the superb qualities of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, which is based on the triangle.

There has been a tendency in recent years toward skinny, bendy masts—for sail control, weight aloft, etc.—which suggested that the lower shrouds be singled up. Single lowers also make it possible to carry the boom further forward when running. Moving the lowers inboard also improved jib sheeting angles but detracted from the superior geometry of conventional mast engineering.

Single lowers created the need for a babystay, which is an inner forestay close to the mast. A babystay is nothing more than an attempt to replace two forward lowers with a single stay whose function is to prevent the middle of the mast from bending aft. That’s good, but a babystay provides very little athwartship support; the mast still has considerable “wiggle room.”

To counter the force of a babystay and prevent the middle of the mast from pumping or excessive bending forward, the spreaders can be raked aft and the lowers’ chainplates can be positioned further aft on the rail. But when the raked shrouds limit boom travel when running, the answer is running backstays (so the leeway runner can be slackened to permit the boom to go forward) and that surely is antediluvian.

The next step backwards from running backstays is a gaff-rigged mainsail, which can’t have a backstay, and that will get you back to using a whole tree as a mast, which means you might, as the need presents itself, send a crew ashore to cut a new one.

Going the other way might lead to rigs based on carbon fiber technology, such as Carbo Spars’ AeroRig®, which has a stayless rotating mast with a fixed one-piece boom for both main and jib (it’s marketed in the US by Forespar) or a B&R rig (invented by the late Lars Bergstrom and Sven Ridder), which, in order to get rid of the backstay and carry a big roach in a fully battened main, has a skinny mast made rigid by deck struts, many swept spreaders and a lot of wire.

The Moving Parties The move to thin bendy masts generally has been attributed to those who race sailboats. They have been said to be fanatical about weight saving, sail shape and tight sheeting angles. And there is no doubt that what they do produces speed on the race course, be it round the buoys or ocean racing.

However, blaming racing sailors for delicate, demanding rigs may be only part of the answer to the question of rig integrity.

Practical Sailor has been told that both sailboat builders and sailmakers have been instrumental in the trend toward slender, complicated masts and that sailboat manufacturers in search of ever-lower costs sometimes go to spar makers and demand cheap, light masts. Naturally, to make them seem desirable, these masts were christened “high-tech.” Perhaps they should be dubbed “high risk.”

Sailmakers, constrained by racing rules that limit the versatility of a single mainsail or limit the number of sails that can be carried aboard, have encouraged bendy masts as a means to make one mainsail perform like several—by making quick, relatively easy adjustments to the luff and foot tension.

Although not as true as it was a decade or two ago, sailmakers’ reputations still are based too much on getting their sails aboard boats that win widely known races.

Mast Makers Speak Jim Kulibert, the veteran sales manager for Charleston Spars (R.D.M. Sparcraft) in Charlotte, North Carolina, said:

“My problem is with that marine surveyor who said three masts with single lowers failed while running with headsails only. That shouldn’t happen. You should be able to fly anything off the mast head…until the headsail blows out. Of course, on a racing boat that means setting up the backs and the baby stay. On an Island Packet, nothing special is required.”

Robert Quates, technical manager for Charleston Spars, which is a supplier to Beneteau, Cabo Rico, Caliber, Catalina, Freedom, Gemini, Hunter and Island Packet, explained more fully.

“We like rig proposals. They can be very exciting. However, the thin spars require very precise tuning. If anything gets the least bit out of tune, the mast pumps and everything goes.”

He said builders often demand that sparmakers make the lightest and cheapest possible rigs, even specify the weight and the cost. He said that for builders, single lowers permit the elimination of some hardware and a set of chainplates.

“Saves some money. That’s good. But it can make,” Quates said, “for some borderline applications.

“Running backstays? They’re an unfortunate reality. Personally, I like fore and aft lowers.”

(Quates is in good company. The book, Desirable and Undesirable Characteristics of Offshore Yachts, by the Technical Committee of the Cruising Club of America and edited by John Rousmaniere, states in a chapter by Rod Stephens and Mitch Gibbons-Neff, “…the babystay…provides fore-and-aft support for the mast when there are no forward lower shrouds, as is often the case in modern boats… We prefer forward lowers…”)

Another mast maker, Chuck Simmons, the US distributor of England’s Proctor Masts, said that unless you have a robustly sectioned mast, you should not sail jib only on a boat with “in-line” single lowers. Because Proctor makes masts for both small one-design racing boats and larger boats (both racing and cruising), Simmons seems well-positioned to comment on this subject.

“If a mast fails while sailing headsail only, with or without a whisker pole, on a boat with in-line single lowers (plus the standard forestay, backstay and uppers), it must be considered ‘operator error,’” he said. “That means you’re supposed to know enough not to do it.”

Simmons said that most mast sections don’t mind being bowed forward, but that they are notoriously weak when inverted—meaning bowed aft. He said that on all boats, but especially smaller boats, the mainsail provides considerable support for the mast.

“When sailing headsail only,” he explained, “the mast can suffer inversion and snap like a matchstick.”

He said the mainsail boom and gooseneck pressing forward even a bit helps to prevent mast “inversion.”

Simmons said that, in his opinion, it is not cost that has led to single-lower rigs.

“There’s not much saving involved,” he said, “in getting rid of some wire and a couple of chainplates and tangs, because you have to go to a heavier mast section. Now, if you don’t go up on the mast section, you’re flirting with…well, I wouldn’t do it.”

A Naval Architect Explains Eric Sponberg, a naval architect in Newport, Rhode Island, commented:

“I hate to think that the survivability of a mast depends on the mainsail. In the cases cited, something else happened. Some eccentric load developed and something broke.”

He pointed out that spars and rigging once had built-in redundancy because, he said, “The mast was stiff. The stays and hardware were robust. The staying was rugged.

“You could look at the rig and say, ‘I can lose that and nothing bad will happen; that can break and I can still save the rig.’ Too often now, that’s no longer true. The mast is minimum and the wire and hardware are taken down so far that if any one thing fails, the whole rig is overboard.

“It’s the nail in the horseshoe all over again.”

In addition, Sponberg said that, with sailboats, it is unfortunate but true that advanced performance on the race course always has converted to cruising boats.

“What’s wrong with that,” he said, “is that the cruising sailor may have neither the time nor the manpower to keep the rig in the precise configuration that it demands.”

Sponberg said that although sailboat builders, who are always cost-conscious, may be responsible for the trend toward “minimalized” rigs, it was his opinion that racers and sailmakers bore an even heavier responsibility.

Sponberg has done considerable work on the development of unstayed masts, which he said, “Provides another answer to your question. Engineer the mast to do whatever is required, without any wire and bits of hardware to hold it up.”

The original question still is: On what boat and under what circumstances is it unsafe to fly a headsail only?

Back To Those Broken Masts Let’s go back to David Stainton, the 65-year-old marine surveyor who started all this. Stainton runs a 60-boat yard on Cranberry Island, Maine. He said the three boats whose masts (all with single lower shrouds and no babystay or inner forestay) failed while sailing jib only included a Pearson 26 (a popular model; 2,039 were built) and a 27′ O’Day. He cannot retrieve from his files the name of the third boat. None of them are high-tech racing boats.

It’s not possible to list here all boats with single lowers. Among them are C&Cs, the San Juan 24, the Santana 2023, the O’Day 22, J-Boats, some Catalinas, the MacGregor 26, some Cal boats, the Olson 30, some Pearsons, some Irwins, some Beneteaus, some S2s, etc., but that doesn’t mean that the masts will break if any of these boats are sailed with a headsail only.

On the other hand, you’re unlikely to find single lowers on boats like Grampians, Com-Pacs, Cabo Ricos, Luders, Island Packets, Nicholsons, Shannons, Gozzards, Westsails, Masons, Cape Dorys, any Allied boats, etc.

On boats whose standing rigging consists of a forestay, backstay, two uppers and single lowers, how many masts have broken? That’s not known.

A Simple Test As it stands, the only advice that emerges for owners of such boats (or any boat, for that matter) is that if your boat has a sturdy mast, not too bendy, “in-line” lowers are okay, and it’s safe to sail headsail only.

What is “sturdy” and what is “not too bendy?”

A practical answer came from Eric Sponberg. Here’s what he said: “It gets scary if the mast pumps fore-and-aft one quarter to one half of its overall dimension. In other words, if the mast measures eight inches from the front edge to the rear edge and it moves two to four inches, watch out!”

Conversely, he said that if the mast is steady and doesn’t pump, there is no cause for worry.

So, the answer to the question, “On what boat should you be able to sail headsail only?” the answer is, “Any boat,” but if it has single lowers give it the Sponberg test.

Contact- Sponberg Yacht Design, PO Box 661, Newport, RI 02840; 401/849-7730; email: [email protected]; www.boatbuilding.com/sponberg.

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• Bigger Boats

Hi I was on my last sail of the season; 2 ft seas, 5 to 10 kts w/ little gusts. Was on a starboard close haul when the mast and RF came crashing down on port side; so fast I didn't see what happened. Boat is 1989 272 le mast and rigging was checked by rigging before it went up and all looked good. Mast broke at deck and snapped at the speaders. The genoa and main sail ended under water and lost life lines and stancions on port. Got small dent from mast on port side. No one got hurt. It seems they are going to total the boat which I have put an incredible amount of money and tlc into. Does anyone know where i could get a mast and boom besides Rigrite. I'd like to try to buy the boat back from insurance, but the prices i've gotten for the rigging don't make economical sense. Any feedback appreciated. (used sources would be fine) thanks Paul Beam  

Once a vessel has been 'written off '(declared a total loss) by an insurance company it is almost impossible to get insurance on that hull again. I'd be extremely careful about buying a hull that you will have to pay to dispose of if things don't work out.  

it sounds as though in exchange for your insurance co's payment of the loss amount agreed between you, they propose to take title to the vessel. why don't they just pay you the cost to repair it and let you keep the boat? find out what they intend to do-- pay you off, then sell it as-is, where is? auction it? it seems to me that a perfectly usable hull should be able to be restored at a reasonable cost. whoever is inclined to do so could put another mast and rigging on it. you may wish to try arbitrating this with BoatUS if that's your carrier.  

Wow. Glad no one was injured. I don't know any other source for a 272 mast other than RigRite. It might be worth looking for a beaten up 272 that you could probably purchase for very little, and use it for parts to repair yours. As an aside, do you know the cause of the failure? Did the mast section actually break, or did the rigging pull out or fail?  

You shouldn't have to use RigRite. Any mast the right length should work, you just need the right fitting for the deck if deck stepped or the keel if keel stepped to go with the mast. What failed on your mast that it crashed? Others might want to look at the failure potential on their own boats to avoid the same problem. Here's an outfit selling used masts they have one listed for a Cal 27 probably similar size to the 272? http://sailboatwreckingyard.com/  

Try Craigslist. I saw a 272 being parted out there recently.  

MaritimeTees

2 oday 272's for sale on ebay currently. Paul did the insurance company pay off rather quickly or did they give you a hard time and investigate? What happened to you is my worst nightmare. From your description it sounds like it was mast failure. I insured my boat with foremost and we came to a conclusion if the boat is a total loss currently their payout would be 17,500 and 3,000 in gear if she sinks losing my gear. Chartplotter, tillerpilot,etc..I pay a little more for this insurance which is 30.00 a month then I did in the past. If I run across anything I will let you know.  

Here's a mast in your neighborhood for a 27 foot O'day. http://www.massmarineparts.com/197727oday.aspx  

The original 27 ft. O'Day had a taller mast and of course, more sail area...I think that would be difficult to make work without a substantial change in sailing characteristics and replacement of the rigging...  

thanks pat that's what i thought. What I did find (thank You GREG!) in New Jersey (actually Greg found it) was an 87 272 that a guy was getting divorced and left in boat yard for 6 years Water got into the sole and seized engine but all the rigging is intact. He is asking 2k and I can get for less. I have a good price to have it brought to boston where I'd strip it. I can sell the lead keel for about 800 (40 cents a lb) which will pay for half the shipping. So I might be ok. Greg, if you are reading this, thank you for the lead. I think it saved my butt Paul Beam  

Thats great news. Did you ever figure out what the cause of the dismasting was?  

Cutting a mast shorter should be easy, changing the mast step might not be. Is that boat keel stepped or deck stepped? Sounds like you have a good plan and a whole boat worth of spares. Good luck with it.  

DHaranSailor

jibes138 said: You shouldn't have to use RigRite. Any mast the right length should work, you just need the right fitting for the deck if deck stepped or the keel if keel stepped to go with the mast. What failed on your mast that it crashed? Others might want to look at the failure potential on their own boats to avoid the same problem. Here's an outfit selling used masts they have one listed for a Cal 27 probably similar size to the 272? http://sailboatwreckingyard.com/ Click to expand

I have a mast, boom spreaders, all painted with Imron, and standing rigging for a 28' O'Day you can have if you will pickup. I am located in Northeast Louisiana. These are off of a boat I was rebuilding and have since parted out. I hate to see the go to waste is why they are so cheap.  

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