I remember my own fitting failure on my Taipan F16.

The boat was completed in 2004 with some Aussies around and they all had a good laugh about the size of shackle I wanted to use for the hound fitting. I received comments like, they use those to anchor supercarriers. So under peer pressure I disregarded my own experience of having sailed for 7 years on the North Sea and fitted a shackle of the size they approved off.

I checked up on the shackle after a week of sailing and it was completely deformed, the pin was completely end out of shape and the sides were warped. Likely this shackle was made of some very ductile stainless steel and it hadn't broken. I did however had to saw it off my mast in several pieces.

Afterwards I fitted the originally planned shackle for the job and it is still up up without any compliants.

I guess that the F16 rig in the North Sea environment experienced higher loads then the experts initially thought. =)

Wouter