I don't want to get into the discussion about what should be warranteed or not. I think when you really look at the numbers of both masts and bow foils on the Nacra 6.0 NA that fail, there are fairly large numbers. If you are going to sail and race the boat hard, the stock equipment will fail eventually. I have broken 2 foils and have had a hand in 4 wrecked masts in a 5-year span. I have had problems with the sail track getting pinched off twice. Both of these were due to the mast hitting the water or beach hard. One was a really bad pitchpole, the other was the boat flipping on the beach in a bad microburst. 2 Nacra 6.0s had masts ruined flipping on their sides in the same incident.

The interesting thing is that my original 1994 Nacra 6.0 mast has a spreader bracket that is ~ 1/4 inch shorter then the one on my newer mast. This shifts the loads to the web on the mast, not the sail track. This mast has been through hell and the sail track has not shown any sign of being pinched off. Somewhere along the line I would guess the tolerances slipped and were ignored.

On at least 5 occasions, I have lobbied Jack Young for improvements to the 6.0 that would in my estimation have made the boats more reliable while incurring very minimal expense on the factory’s part. None of these would result in speed increases or change the boat. Performance seems generally unwilling to adopt them. They have always adopted the Mantra “That Never happens” It is unfortunate because they have a generally awesome product, but still have quality issues and common failure modes that are solvable.

Eric Anderson