GroupWBench

Snap – not the crackle pop kind, not the keeps your pants closed kind, but the SNAP! something just broke kind is what we had today…twice. Ivy and I went out to the lake for what was, until the SNAP!, a nice lazy day on the lake. We had just sailed the length of the lake and were way down near
the dam heading back toward the marina when we were hit with the SNAPS!

The first one was pretty simple. The shackle that connects the jib (the sail at the front of the boat) to the very front of the boat when SNAP! and stopped holding the sail down at the front corner. The sail started bunching up and climbing up towards the top of the mast. Ivy saw what the problem was before I did. I was steering and trying to figure out why the boat felt different all of a sudden. It was relatively easy to turn the boat into the wind and diagnose the problem. Ivy grabbed a replacement shackle from the magic box of spare junk that has provided so much of what we need for the boat. She went forward, lowered the sail, replaced the shackle, and put the sail back up in next to no time – making the sailboat guy in the Viagra commercial with the broken shackle look like an amateur in the process.

We were congratulating each other on the nice response to a little problem when SNAP! we had a more serious problem on our hands. We were sailing with the wind coming over the “drivers” side (port tack) and were hit by a pretty good gust. It wasn’t anything more than any of the wind and gusts
Dwight and I took when we were racing the boat a couple of weeks ago. Ivy turned to let the mainsail out a little to reduce the impact of the wind. I heard a SNAP! and the whole boat jerked a bit. Ivy was leaning over holding the mainsheet (control rope for the big sail in the back) and tipped forward. I
thought that maybe when she grabbed it, a bunch of slack fed through or something. The boat turned a bit and I was busy trying to get us back on course.

“What happened?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t know. I thought you dumped the main too much. I think we’re ok now,” was my optimistic reply. Ever the optimist, that’s me!

“No, look!”

I looked up to see the upper port shroud (steel wire holding the mast up that runs from the top of the mast to the outside edge of the driver’s side of the boat) dangling in the air, unattached except way up at the top of the mast. With the wind blowing from that side of the boat, all of the force from the wind on the sails was on the lower shroud that runs from the side of the boat up to the mast near the spreader – about three fourths of the way up the mast. I pushed the tiller over until we were going the opposite direction and all the force from the sails was on the other side of the boat where we (optimistically) had two good shrouds.

We hopped around and got the motor started. Ivy went forward and dropped the sails so that we took most of the pressure off the rigging. Once we started the long drive back to the marina, I went and connected the line that raises the sail to a cleat on the port side of the boat to help support the mast from the pressures from the motorboat wakes shaking the boat around.

Back in the marina, a quick check proved that a cotter ring had failed and let the pin that held the shroud down come out. It took about twenty seconds of digging in the magic box of spare junk to find a bolt and a pair of nuts to let  us do a quick temporary fix. At least, it doesn’t look like the mast will fall over on anyone before I do a more permanent fix. Looks like it is time to do a 100% super close
inspection of everything.

Now, I’m not saying anything, but…recall that the last two times Ivy went out on a motor boat, they broke down. Dead in the water, bobbing along like a dead duck. Could it be that she has decided to bring her special magic to the sailing world? Oh SNAP!