[Public-List] A cautionary tale...

[Don Campbell]

The 37 has a keel stepped mast that helps to hold it up in situations like 
this.
Don

-----Original Message----- 
From: Gordon Laco via Public-List
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2018 5:05 PM
To: public Alberg 30 List -- open to all
Cc: Gordon Laco
Subject: [Public-List] A cautionary tale...

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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