I was one tack away from loosing my mast today. We had some pretty heavy wind today gusts up to 28knt I fought the wind for about two hours then got tired of being healed over to 40 degree so I reefed the main. Spent the rest of the day running up and down the lake. I packed it in after about 8 hours of constant sailing. When I got to the dock and started putting eveyrthing away I noticed that the port front shroud pin was missing the clip and the pin was almost out of the shackel.
It could have been a very sad day. Glad I stopped when I did, One more port tack and I would have lost that shroud. I doubt it would have brought down the whole mast but it would not have been much fun.
Glad you made it back in one peice. Before our second sail this season we got to the boat and found the inner shrouds flapping, looks like we forgot to tighten down the jam nuts on the shrouds when we stepped the mast the week before, and they worked loose over the week.
I am thinking off replacing all my safty rings with cotterpins. I think this would help prevent any more issues with safty rings from backing off the pins.
We stepped EE's mast again yesterday, and launched her.
I also replaced the safety rings on my shrouds with cotter pins, long enough ones so they would stop the turnbuckle from being able to turn much at all.
