38 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com November 2017LEARNING CURVE
After renewing his standing rigging with the help of a rigger, Richard Openshaw was not
expecting his forestay to come adrift at sea in very light Mediterranean winds
A tiny mistake almost
cost us our rig
M
y wife, Joan, and I
have been sailing our
Wauquiez Pretorien
35, Penny Lane of
Itchenor, to and in the
Mediterranean since 2012, the last
two summers mostly in the Balearics.
Penny Lane winters in Addaia,
Menorca, a wonderful, well-sheltered
marina on the north coast.
This year we decided to replace
the standing rigging. Partly because
of the unfavourable exchange rate
caused by the Brexit vote, I decided
to do the job myself with the help of
a local rigger, using Sta-Lok fittings
on the lower ends of the stays. I
bought the wire, with upper terminals
swaged on, in the UK, and shipped it
out to Menorca. The job went fairly
smoothly, and the mast was re-
stepped pretty much on schedule.
The first week after launching was
spent cruising round Menorca with
friends. There wasn’t much wind so
the rigging was not really tested. I had
not seized the bottle screws, as they
would soon need tightening, but I was
keeping an eye on them.
After our visitors left, we embarked
on the next stage of our plan: to returnto the English Channel over the next
couple of summers. Our last night in
Majorca was spent at anchor in Cala
Santa Ponça. The crossing to Ibiza
is about 50 miles from there, so we
planned an early start to be sure of
making it in daylight. The forecast was
ideal, Force 3-4 from the south-east
with calm seas.
The forecast was wrong! We had
very light wind and a big swell fromastern, so we motored. We tried
various sail combinations to reduce
the rolling, and finished up with no
main, and the deep-furled jib sheeted
fore and aft. The rolling was straining
the new rigging and the shrouds were
beginning to slacken and tighten as
we rolled.
We were about a mile and a half
from Punta des Gat, the northern tip
of Ibiza, when there was a bang. I
looked up to see that the forestay had
come away from the stemhead fitting
and was thrashing around at the end
of the jib furling line.
I grabbed a line from a cockpit
locker and rushed forward to secure
the forestay, picking up a bruise in
the process. The clevis pin, put in by
the riggers barely two weeks earlier,
had fallen out! The babystay, the
wind from astern and the fact that
the mast is keel-stepped had saved
the rig. Phew! I rigged the removable
inner forestay, took a spare jib halyard
forward and breathed again.
We anchored in Cala de Portinax
and got to work. I was expecting to
make a temporary repair, probably
with a bolt, but I found the clevis pin
in the scuppers on the port side! I then
discovered that the split pin was lying
where it fell, in the stemhead fitting,
and as straight as the day it was made!Penny Lane lies at
anchor in Menorca’s
Cala Macarella
ALL PHOTOS: RICHARD OPENSHAW UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE