Pulling a shroud pin to drop the mast is probably the best/quickest/safest way to drop the stick but I would still want to flip the boat over, just to keep the tramp down low, as in under water, and then just sit between the hulls on the underside of the tramp, using the mast/sails underwater as a sea anchor.
I think the biggest 'problem' in this event was recognition. Nobody knew the winds would turn out to be 80mph. I've been out when 'a storm was coming' and you can usually see them coming from a ways off, you'll certainly hear it if there's lightning in it... but I'm usually thinking, is it going to be 20mph...or 30...or maybe 40? But 80?? I never would have thought it would have been blowing THAT hard!
I think that's probably why so many guys were caught up short of taking the sails down, etc, hindsight is always 20-20.
So you're going to intentionally destroy your boat so the storm doesn't? Great idea. Apparently those proposing this have never been on a dismasted boat. The rig and sails will destroy a lot besides themselves in conditions way more benign than what they had last weekend. Like was said earlier by Karl the 2nd, you deal with it as it comes with the parameters at that time. The armchair quarterbacking here is almost as bad as SA.
