Sailing sloop rig with spinnaker up, crew weight at 145 Kg’s and one on wire what breaks first?
After jibing re-setting the spinnaker and putting the crew out on wire the boat accelerates very quickly with the skipper trying to keep up. On top of that hit by a gust causing a bare away with the boat still accelerating and the spinnaker dumped we heard a loud crack then a tearing noise and no swimming. We had a quick look around and everything seemed fine, the rig was still up, all of the stay points were intact, the hulls were in good shape, rudders and boards were all there, so we continued sailing for the rest of the day. Once on the beach a closer inspection of the boat was carried out and still nothing was obvious. During our next pre race inspection in the shed at home we found a small crack in the top of the port rudder. On closer inspection the rudder had more than a couple of small cracks and the join in the head of the rudder had split and the foam inside was torn. We found our noise. We called Jim to get his opinion and he said he has seen it before on Tiapans. The loads on your rudders when the boats are traveling fast and you have to make large changes of direction can result in broken rudders. He said if your boat is well balanced you might not even know how much load you are putting on things. Next time you are sailing even without a spinnaker and you have to change direction while traveling fast, have a look at your rudders, it will surprise you how far they bend.
Our boat is now sporting a new set of Joey rudders and talking with Joey all the rudders he has and will build for us have the same layup as the Tiapans.
There is a picture of the incident located in the Photo Bucket 2007 Spin States pic 525. The rudder damage pic is attached.
Peter