I know of one occasion where the dolphin striker broke on a Marstrom due to manufacturing fault but the beam didn't break. But I haven't seen anyone bold enough to remove it!
I've seen this happen on more boats, even with alu beams. The dolphinstriker is mainly there to add stiffness to the beam not so much to add strength (although it does indeed add heaps of "strength")
But stay out in serious chop and wind with a broken dolphinstriker and the beams will crack up near the hulls (high local stresses). If they don't then the engineer designing the beam + dolphinstriker setup really overdimensioned the beam which is pointless with a D-striker there.
Hakan, you should just try a good snuffer setup (like the topcat version). I think you'll find that the differences between the snuffer and snail are to small to matter. Currently a good snuffer costs 250 Euro's complete, I don't know what the snail costs but I suspect a whole lot more. There much be serious advantages to the snail to justify such a setup.
Personally I really appreciate the simple construction of the snuffer. No moving parts that can jam up with sand and salt, repairs are very easily made (needle and thread).
Am I right to assume that the snail setup requires the boat to have twin forestays ?
Regards,
Wouter