[Public-List] A cautionary tale...

[Wes Gardner]

Good story...but ouch!  Glad that thing didn't come all the way down at
once and smack you on the head!

Wes

On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 5:05 PM, Gordon Laco via Public-List <
public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:

> So there we were, happily launching SURPRISE yesterday.  Aside from an
> ugly panic ransacking my office looking for the knot meter through hull the
> day before (yes, it turned up in a tidy forgotten location I’d placed it
> last fall so I wouldn’t lose it…) all went painlessly.
>
> I went back to my office and worked away merrily till late afternoon when
> I decided to down pen and head back over to see how SURPRISE was doing.
> She was fine, so I decided to stroll further out on the docks to invite my
> friend Pete over for the first boat beer of the season. On the way to his
> boat, I heard a familiar sound… a combination of soft cursing overlaying
> the squeaking of a jammed genoa furler.
>
> The source was a lovely Alberg 37, with its new owner in the cockpit
> hauling on his furling line with his portside primary self tailing winch.
> There was a small working jib on the furler, half furled.  Glancing up I
> could see the usual cause of stiff or jammed furling…. the hoist of the
> sail was short of the full length of the forestay, so the halyard had taken
> advantage of the five feet or so between the swivel (shackled to the head
> of the sail) and the halyard block… wrapping three turns around the
> extrusion.  That of course results in plenty of friction, enough to jam the
> furler.
>
> I introduced myself, said I was a fellow Alberg owner, and suggested that
> I could fix his problem.  I always have a terror of being a ‘helpoid’,
> which is what I call those who press unwanted (and usually useless) help on
> people.  My offer was gratefully accepted.
>
> I hopped aboard and explained the halyard wrap issue, and suggested that
> all would be well if the owner put a pennant or leader on the head of the
> sail so that the top swivel was up near enough to the halyard block so it
> couldn’t wrap the halyard.  I said I could whip one up for him if he had
> some light line… his furrowed brow smoothed out and he said ‘oh, something
> like this?’ and produced a nice wire pennant, which he said he’d removed
> from the sail, not knowing what it was for.  ‘Perfect!” cried I, ‘let’s get
> that sail down, put the wire back on, and I expect all will be well’.
>
> So I walked up to the half furled sail and after calling to him to cast
> off the furling line, waited for the breeze to unfurl the sail.  It
> didn’t.  I reached up to the clew and gave it a tug… and something very
> very bad happened.
>
> There was a small ‘twang’ up at the masthead, and the whole forestay fell
> off.  At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but as the heavy gear
> started coming down on me, I shouted ‘THE FORESTAY BROKE - LOOK OUT FOR THE
> MAST!’
>
> Well the mast didn’t fall.  The deck hounds and forward lowers were enough
> to hold it up.  The forestay with its half furled sail on the furler
> extrusion came down till its head was resting on the spreaders, with a
> ragged headsail halyard coming out the top holding it up.  I scrambled back
> to the mast looking for his #2 jib halyard or a spinnaker halyard; of
> course there was none.  So I found the main halyard, whipped it around the
> shrouds so it led forward, lengthened it with a sheet, then cranked that
> taut with the halyard winch after making it down to a bow mooring cleat.
>  Hokay… the mast isn’t going to fall, but what the hell happened?
>
> We eased the genoa halyard till we could pop the top of the
> headstay/furler assembly under the spreaders and lower it to the deck.
> There we beheld something I’d never seen in 30 years of rigging yachts.
>  The halyard led INTO the top of the furler’s extrusion.  it was wrapped
> around the 5/16” 1x19 wire of the forestay hard tight and had burst the
> aluminium alloy extrusion for about two feet.  Then it made the two or
> three leisurely wraps that started the issue, ending at its shackle on the
> furler’s top swivel, which was shackled to the head of the sail.
>
> So here’s what happened as best I can reconstruct it.  The owner removed
> the jib’s pennant.  He hoisted it, probably with not much halyard tension,
> then tried to furl it.  The exposed upper part of the halyard between the
> top swivel and the block made its wraps, stiffening up the furling process,
> perhaps stopping it.   When the owner found the furling stiffening up, he
> put the furling line to the port primary self tailing winch.  After a few
> turns it wouldn’t move… even with a strong young man leaning red faced with
> all his strength on a 10” handle…. as he was when we walked up.   The few
> turns the winch imposed on the jammed furler served only to wind the
> halyard around the forestay, and the immense force being applied wrapping
> the rope onto the wire cause it to grip the wire so well, that it started
> turning the wire itself.  Repeated attempts to unfurl, then furl again,
> turned the strands of the wire back and forth, fatiguing the steel so that
> when I came the last strand or two broke when I tugged on the clew,
> applying only a few pounds of force.
>
> The owner came back to our boat to share that beer… my wife commented that
> if this had happened out in the open sailing back to Windsor as he’d
> planned to, that mast almost certainly would have come down if the boat was
> pitching.  He might have been killed… at the least he’d have had a terrible
> issue to deal with out there.  He profusely thanked us for helping him,
> agreeing that it was better this happened in the marina that out there.  I
> put him in touch with a good man I know who still does itinerant rigging
> house calls - he agreed to come the next day.  The marina agreed to lower
> the mast the next day… that was fine because we’d cut the mangled jib
> halyard and extended it with another sheet to hold the mast up.
>
> So what happened today?  The broker who’d sold the boat to the new owner a
> few days ago called me asking for a statement about what I thought
> happened… it turns out the new owner is trying to pin the damage on the
> previous owner and the broker.  Oh dear, thought I, what am in involved in
> now…  So I reported to the broker; ‘the halyard was hopelessly jammed in
> the top of the extrusion… if it was that way before he took possession of
> the boat, he couldn’t have hoisted that sail.  You decide’.
>
> As I returned to my work today, I had the thought while pondering what was
> going through the owner’s head as he ground on his self tailing primary
> winch harder and harder… ‘perhaps sometimes, when something sticks, hitting
> it with a bigger hammer isn’t the thing to do’.    What’s going to happen
> next?  Perhaps this might get ugly...
>
> Gordon Laco
> www.gordonlaco.com
> #426 SURPRISE
>
>
>
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