look at the picrurers, at the bending of the mast
finally it broke
the picturers are configured to show in slidshow mode web page

OOoooo yeah....sailing with a spinnaker in strong breeze with the mainsheet eased that far is not a good idea...of course, he knows that by now.

Nice album! The only thing someone forgot to tell you is how to use the backstay. OUCH, that was expensive!

Bob

Been there. Done that. Bought the mast to prove it.

I broke mine in the exact same place. However I was not running my mainsheet as loose as that. I was travelled down and stuffed a wave which stopped the boat. Sounds like a shotgun blast doesn't it?

So did it happen stuffing a wave?

On a side note, it's unfortunate that the skipper wasn't aware of the importance of mainsheet tension.

Mike Hill
www.stlouiscats.com

Aside from a lack of mainsheet tension, this pic of the S-bend in the mast seems to indicate insufficient diamond tension....

how much diamond tension should be "dialed-in" on a boat with a spin (e.g. what should my diamond tension be with a spin on a traditionally non-spin boat?)

Nice pictures of a nice looking boat, you almost caught the moment of the break. There's a challenge for the photographers.

Mine broke at the spreaders. hell of a bang. Did you damage the sail - mine survived. We were sailing with a very full nylon spinnaker in the North sea waves at the time.

your mast looked stiff sideways upwind, but despite a shed load of down-haul you were getting next to no mast bend. When you rig the new mast[$$$$$$$$!]check your spreader rake[50mm on the euro sails], this will help flatten that very full mainsail upwind.

The more you ease the main downwind the more the mast bends and the fuller the main and spinny get, then the more you have to bear off. Bit of a downward spiral. Until bang. It cost me a lot of money to figure this out!

Hope that you get the boat sorted soon. looks like a good sailing spot there.

Holy noodle mast batman!

I'd guess at least 400 lbs. Do you run prebend on your mast? If so, you should have a fair amount of diamond tension already. On the Tiger we ran 900lb with the old square top. I have heard of an I-20 sailor running even more.

Chris.

we run 650

I think more than 800lbs of diamond wire tension voids the PC warrantee on a carbon Nacra 20 mast. I'm not real sure about the lbs...but it's around that mark somewhere.

Correct >800 warranty voided

In these parts we call mast snapping "Hilling it", like "Damn, if they don't watch out they're gonna Hill that stick."

The hobie tiger section is a rather stiff mast section and I expect ALOT of diamond wire tension as a result. Other boats tend to run with noticeably less. For example on my F16 I run with about 300 lbs. A good rule of thumb is when in heavy winds and max downhaul the windward diamond wire just doesn't go slack. More tension is only adviceably if you can't get enough prebend in your rig by altering spreader rake.


Wouter

when you measure the tension the mast is supposed to be on its "side." So you measure the tension on the top wire with the spreaders vertical... is this correct?

No, vertical. Both diamonds should also be the same !!!!!

Thanks Scoob!