Jamie,

As the spinnaker halyard is 1000mm above the hound point, I am never to keen to let the mainsheet out in the gusts. The mainsheet acts like a back stay & if you play the traveller, the mast stays put in the gusts. And believe me the gusts were getting quiet intense that day & when you see the kite flogg in the video, we had decided enough was enough & we were loosing to much height as we were racing on a river race.
I unfortunately learnt my lesson a few years ago racing the Tornado in a olypic qualifying event & let out a little too much sheet in a "big" gust ( I had already run out of traveller) we nose dived & the mast broke about 2000m below the hound.
The mast you see in the video is a "Capricorn" section & much stiffer than our previous Marstrom T section.

A bit later on in this footage we nose dived the boat while sailing with slightly "cracked sheet". the bow actually went in a litle deeper than shown in the video, but did not stop as you would normally expect. I think a gust got us a little square on & a little off gaurd.

We survived that was the main thing.

Last year a Capricorn did the same thing right in front of us & cartwheeled.! .

What was most disappointing about the video footage on this day was about 1hr into the race we went thru the gate at Point Sturt & headed to the Nerung mark - none of the boats in front of us were game to fly their kites, as we were behind the eight ball & need of some gain we kept the kite up & I trapped of the back of the boat with Carina sitting in front of my front foot ( on the rear beam) I was exciting to say the least, but Phill Brander could not stand upright in the power boat to get any footage. I'm pretty sure any footage here would shown people how potent this design is in a short choppy seaway with the boat literally out of control on accaisons.

It certainly was a ride i wont forget for a while.

Regards & happy sailing

Marcus