Last weekend I was all set to race in the Governor’s Cup, a challenging race on the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis to St. Mary’s College, about 65nm away. My crew of 3 and I were prepared for the overnight race on a steamy hot day here and we departed the Annapolis City Dock at 1pm to head out to the race start. There were about 60 boats starting at the Annapolis leg in separate starts. Ours was at 3:10pm. We had 3 others in our PHRF class and we started in good position. The only downside is that we had our first reef in because the wind was 17-20kn with pretty good wave action so being less heeled was desired to get speed through the chop. However, after the start the wind died down and we needed to shake out the reef (without turning on the motor). We did that quickly on our first tack and then we were sailing along quite well when I heard a “pop”.
Nothing looked out of sorts anywhere and I guessed it was just something that had loosened tension from the new tack. 5 minutes later, I heard another ripping sound and then I saw the lower mast collar on the cabin top. This was all of 30 minutes into the race. I knew it was over for us for the 14 hour race. Luckily, we were only 45 minutes away from the city dock where we had just left!
The next day I emailed Mike Quill. He told me he had a replacement casting, and by Tuesday it was on its way to Baltimore. Studying the old casting, it looks like the connection at the stainless steel bolts had slowly corroded the aluminum casting at those tabs. Over 37 years, the stainless had finally won over the aluminum and the aluminum gave way. The pressure on the collar is an uplift from all the turning blocks, especially the halyard. It took a few minutes for that pressure to rip the one-piece casting in half and basically everything just went slack. No drama, just a wonk-wonk and the race was over.
The lesson in all this is to check your mast collar for any cracks that might be waiting to bust open, especially at the connection bolts. Given the age of our boats, this was just a matter of time and chemistry to occur. Why this particular item is cast aluminum when the next collar up is stainless steel? I don’t know that - maybe initial manufacturing cost? Mike suggested there was concern about putting a stainless collar on the mast. Seems to me that if they are separated properly it shouldn’t be an issue.
The good news is that for about 16 boat units and about 1 week I was back on the water and sailing. I don’t think I could have done that with a new custom stainless collar. The other good news is that the new collar came as a two-piece casting - so I didn’t have to pull the mast etc to put it on (and hence, another 16 boat units!)
Take care -
Bob Gehrman
NS30 #396 “Quickbeam”
Baltimore, Maryland
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