Hi Gang,
It sounds like the Tornado class wants a carbon mast no matter what. The headline has now changed to a safety point. "Any reason to support the position in favor of the carbon mast is welcome".
A shroud extension system would make the Tornado one person rightable and the parts cost about $100.
A new aluminum mast extrusion die paid for by the manufacturer would solve the mast extrusion inconsistency problem. If there is a problem with variations in the mast taper, this can be solved with laser cutting and robotic welding. This is twenty year old manufacturing technology. I see none of these solutions being suggested. The Tornado class wants a carbon mast no matter what and that is all there is to that.
The Finn class decided to go with a carbon mast a few years ago and now their mast situation is a mess; no satisfactory solution. The masts still break like match sticks.
Learn from experience:
The sailboard industry tried carbom masts about 25 years ago. The first ones were very stiff; too stiff to work at all. The parts were built with fiberglass tooling. The next step was to go down in mall thickness. This was tried; these spars would bend and they proved to be very fragile. Many of the thin wall spars broke while the sail outhaul was being tightened. The rest of them broke while sailing. Carbon sailboard spars got a bad name and the enthusiasm for the carbon sailboard spar fell off for a few years. Then finally along came a carbon spar that was about 75% of the diamenter of the glass spar with a thicker wall than the old carbon spars and the new one was bendy and lightweight and tough. Hot Dog, somebody finally found the answer! They had adjusted the mast diameter and wall thickness in coordination with the modulus of elasticity of carbon and came up with a part that bent much like the glass spar and was much lighter in weight and tough.
If the Tornado class is going to have a satisfactory carbon spar that bends much like the present aluminum mast, the engineers/designers are going to have to have a clean sheet of paper to work with. No rules like "it has to be the same outside shape as the present aluminum mast". A rule like this is guaranteed disaster. There is too much difference in physical properties between carbon and aluminum to impose this limit on the carbon mast.
Bill