Jake I am not saying that the boats are badly built. I am not saying that the masts can ever be made unbreakable. What I am saying is that any manufacturer should be willing to make incremental improvements in their products to improve their reliability.

The fact of the matter is that a large fraction of 6.0 masts show kinking or pinching in at the sail tracks. Many of these masts were set to factory settings. Older masts had fewer problems with this because the bracket was slightly shorter. What changed? Why is the bracket now longer? The answer is most likely quality control.


I would note that between Frank Dimeo, Garret Norton, Dave Fortier, and Myself we have probably killed 16-20 masts. I would guess at least 1/2 of them should have broken given the circumstances. Several of the masts should not have broken. I do not object to buying a new mast if I roll the boat in the surf. I do object to breaking one sailing upwind double trapeezing when it was set to factory specs on a 4 month old boat.

I assume gear will fail. My sailing program takes into account periodic gear failure. I believe every single piece of the boat will break eventually when sailed hard. This is ok and I don’t have a problem with that. What I object to are things that fail regularly and are preventable through minor modification.
Examples of this are factory shrouds not being reliable, bow foil breakage, spreader and bracket design issues, jib track rivets pulling out, trampoline stitching failing (poor thread choice), drilling the ruder pivot hole in the correct spot, traveler car failure and very bad quality control on sails.

Even when numerous sailors complain about specific problems while offering better solutions that should cost very little money, Performance refuses. That is the galling part. I love the boat, the local dealer is very very good, but I do not like dealing with the company