All:
Boy, today started out perfectly. We took out our 1980 H16 onto Lake Lanier for a day of sailing and racing. We had perfect winds about 12-15 MPH. We were out for about 3 hours racing every sailboat we came across. Everything was perfect and we were making our way back to the boat ramp. We just completed a tack when all of a sudden, we heard a big bang. A half a second later, we were looking at the mast, sails and boom floating in the water next to the boat. At first I thought we broke a hull but when I saw we were floating upright in the water, I surmised that we broke a shroud. As we were trying to collect the pieces of the boat from the water, my wife located the shroud that failed and it indeed snapped at the swage on the mast tang.
We were lucky enough to have a sheriff's boat come by and tow us about a mile to shore. Two hours later, the boat was on the trailer and we limped our way back home. This was a real eye-opener!!
We haven't assessed the damage to the boat, but I know the sails were ripping while we were trying to haul everything onto the boat as we were making everything ready for the tow. The battens were a real problem in trying to get the mast and the sails onto the boat. I had my knife and was cutting the batten lines so they wouldn't poke through the batten pockets but I couldn't cut all of them.
What is really surprising is that the shrouds were less than a year old. This was the last thing I thought could fail on the boat. Boy was I wrong!! We sail frequently and recently we have been putting the boat in salt water for some ocean sailing. Could that speed the deterioration of the shrouds?
I am now a bit gun shy and I am tossing about the idea of doubling the shrouds so that there is a safety in case one breaks in the future. Has anyone done this or am I being too overly cautious?
Finally, I see in the Murray's catalogue that they offer a hydraulic swaged shrouds. Do you guys think that they would be stronger and more durable? Like I said, the shrouds were less than a a year old when they failed plus they were Hobie'swith the standard swages.
The only up side to this story is that nobody was hit by the falling mast and we were rescued pretty quickly. I am hoping I can talk my wife into letting me replace the sails now that they have some rips in them. They needed replacing soon, anyway.
Thanks and I look forward to hearing your advise.
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Weve got a 99' Hunter 340 that they were out on, while my hobie is being completely restored....
