Sail - July 2018

SAIL MAGAZINE

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PHOTO BY

JEFFREY MCCARTHY

Rig Up

Two perspectives on a

forestay failure at sea

By Je rey McCarthy

I

s it a virtue to emerge safely from messes

you should have avoided in the i rst place?

Last summer’s sail to Bermuda from Maine

gave me more than one chance to answer

that question, most notably during the cata-

strophic failure of our forestay in the Sargasso

Sea. My friend Derek and I tell this story to-

gether to better learn from the experience and

to agree misery loves company.

Nellie is my Beneteau First 42, built in 1983 and

eager beyond her years. In addition to Derek, the

crew consisted of Rieko, his wife of 20 years, and

my father, Ted. Derek is a climbing friend from

Banf , Canada, who once crewed on 12-Me-

ters—competent, detail-oriented and steady. He

and Rieko met in Japan, and she brings a body of

saltwater knowledge from when she and Derek

lived aboard their own boat. My father, Ted,

was 75 for this voyage, going strong and toting a

lifetime of sailboat racing. Bermuda tempted us

all with its challenging distance, the tricky Gulf

Stream crossing and the exotic promise of palm

trees and English accents.

Really, it’s simple: you grow

up in New England, you sail

to Bermuda. Everest martyr

George Mallory explained he

had to climb said mountain

“because it’s there,” and for

me Bermuda has always

been there.

As for that forestay... A

hard coming we had of it, and

just the worst sort of head-

winds and lumpy seas. h e

week was a feast of discomforts serving generous

portions of wave bashing and big helpings of unsa-

vory beating. So it was a shock that on the calmest

day we’d seen and only 40 miles from Bermuda

our forestay parted, leaving the whole rig wobbling

like a drunk. Luckily, the First 42 has a 57t Isomat

mast, running backstays, beefy shrouds and a baby-

stay. Would that be enough, though, to keep the rig

pointing at the clouds and not the seal oor?

Derek was at the helm, Rieko was enjoying the

sun in the cockpit, Ted was reading on a settee,

and I was at the chart table preparing for the

welcoming tones of Bermuda radio on the VHF.

Instead, I heard what crime thrillers call “a sharp

report”—what sounded like a cross between

a gunshot and a baseball leaving a really big

bat. h at was bad. Worse yet was feeling Nellie

shiver, just shake like a golden retriever at the

beach. Derek called me, and I was through the

companionway in time to see the foresail sag and

stumble. It was 1100, blowing 9 knots from the

southeast in a long, friendly swell.

Derek recalls it clearly: “Bang! I knew right

away that something in the rig had failed, a

shroud, a halyard, wasn’t sure which, but my

initial reaction was to turn the wheel to luf up

and take whatever load of the rig I could. Simul-

taneously, I looked up and saw the big sag in the

headstay. I saw you down below, heading up on

deck. Rieko says she remembers me shouting,

‘Jef , I need you up here now!’ In my guts I think

I just knew the forestay had failed. I fully ex-

pected to watch the mast go over the side in slow

motion, but a few automatic things took over.

“Unfortunately, I have twice been on boats

where we had a real rig failure. h e i rst time I

heard it, but didn’t recognize it for what it was,

and the mast went over the side. Luckily we

were close to shore with lots of support and no

one got hurt. h e second time, the i rst experi-

ence helped, and we recognized it immediately

for what it was, crash tacked of the broken

shroud and things stayed upright...”

Unlike Derek, I had no expectations. What

I did have, however, was the task of unclip-

ping the spinnaker halyard from the mast base

and shul ing it forward to become the new

forestay...a job that was a lot harder than it

looked. You see, with the genoa sagging and

the halyard loosed, the sail was atangle in the

spreaders, so getting the spinnaker halyard free

of the radar dome and around that commotion

of gear that should have been up but was now

sagging was awkward and a little perilous to say

the least. Luckily Rieko was a virtuoso at the

rope clutch, giving me just enough slack to free

the halyard but keeping enough tension to keep

me from rolling overboard.

Derek recollects: “At this point I think we

probably both i gured OK, crisis and worst-case

outcome is likely averted, but now we have a big

problem that we have to solve. Fortunately, when

we dropped everything the headsail and foil for

the most part came down on the deck. However,

in doing to so it also folded around its midpoint.

In retrospect I am not sure releasing the genoa

halyard was actually the right thing to do as it

was likely giving some support forward, but I

would be interested to hear what other experi-

enced sailors think might have been the ‘correct’

course of action. Given the sag, I don’t think we

Luckily, the crew was only

hours from Bermuda when

the forestay failure occurred

The broken pin that caused all the trouble