Worst Breakeages

Originally posted by Wave Rider Ah for nosediving ... I s'pose if the whole mast was carbon it'd help ... but it is VERY close to the bow isn't it ... I guess the rig trying to drive itself foward on a boat with so little distance between mast & bow, will always result in a nasty pitching habit.

You want to see nosediving entertainment in a blow watch a fleet of Comets and run a book on how many will be upright by the end of the leg!

I thought Lightnings always had a composite (obviously carbon!) top section of the mast for gust response ... I never knew they were allowed full carbon masts?

Ah for nosediving ... I s'pose if the whole mast was carbon it'd help ... but it is VERY close to the bow isn't it ... I guess the rig trying to drive itself foward on a boat with so little distance between mast & bow, will always result in a nasty pitching habit.

I don't know about worst breakages but this was a good one. My boy was sailing a Lightning open at Cotswold S.C. a couple of years ago. It was blowing a bit and hard work for the assembled Lightnings and Supernovas. He won the first race and we had lunch, the best I ever had (even tablecloths). The next two races were to be back to back and the wind had increased further. The boy was leading fairly comfortably and beating back up to finnish. There was a very sharp inland chop and I did feel for the boat which was powered up and shuddering with the wave impact. Anyway he won the race and sailed off the line to await the next one, I wandered off looking at the wildflowers, when I looked back the boy was sitting on his upturned hull, odd? As he parked up waiting for the other boats to cross the mast broke at deck level and the jagged end was digging into the hull, he had to turn it over to avoid further damage. We recovered the boat, he had two wins anyway, so he won the day, Mark Giles, who builds Lightnings took the remains of the mast away and delivered a new carbon one, on insurance, back to West Oxford the evening before the nationals three weeks later. The boy then won the nationals. The point is, why did the mast not break on that last upwind leg, sold his soul to the devil I say!!

That cant be true. You have the muscles of a little girlie george

 lasers are great for that, at stokes bay winter series someone came in to the beach with a broken mast miles away fom the slipway, just hauled the boat up the beach over the stones and went to fetch the trolley, turned it upside down later and there were only very minor scratches.