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American Spirit II - Day 297; 'Bad' Parts Day in Reunion & Anatomy of a Forestay Failure; Wednesday, October 29, 2014



Jeremy is first up at 7:00 AM, followed by me at 7:30 AM and Joel at 7:45 AM. Breakfast at 8:10 AM: eggs; potato; apricot halves; and French baguette (French bread).

At 9:30 AM when the rigger arrived at his shop I brought the parts I had gotten in Mauritius the day before to him. It took only a second for him to see that the parts I brought were for the racing foil and not the cruising foil. We had ordered the parts for the R 350 furling system instead of the for the C 350. R = Racing; and C = Cruising. They're incompatible. The rigger, Ben, said that we can still use the plastic top halyard wrap stop cap with a little modification by him. Joel and I usually complement each other so that this sort of mistake is caught by one of us, but this time it wasn't. The one emotion I was feeling at this point was 'I feel sick.' All the effort and stress going into getting...the wrong parts. Not to mention the money wasted. Hopefully I can return at least the one expensive part.

I called the rigger in Mauritius to see if I could ship the wrong parts back to Beneteau, either directly from Reunion to France; or to him in Mauritius, who would then ship them directly to France. He didn't know if I could even return the parts. In a perfect world I'd like to get the money back, not a credit for something I will probably never need.

Around noon we headed to the Jumbo mall to go to an ATM (the rigger only takes Euros); buy new phone cards; and provision the boat for our leg to Africa. The supermarket had everything we need except diet coke in cans (they had plastic bottles which we won't take because you can't throw plastic into the ocean); garlic bread; and nuts in cans (the nuts only come in bags). After that we drove to a nearby McDonald's for lunch; then back to the boat. Once there Joel took a nap while I put the groceries away, never an easy task. Because the refrigerator had a 'runaway' diet coke in the bottom of it, I emptied the refrigerator and cleaned it; then filled it up again with what was in it and the new items I'd purchased.

At 3:11 PM I typed up two logs and then tried to send them out over the 'free' internet at the marina. That didn't work until I brought my laptop computer up to the cockpit where the signal apparently was stronger,and the transmission was successful. Its now 5:10 PM and the rigger said he'll stop by when it gets cooler out to put the new forestay and old foil up, but not connect them until tomorrow. The rigger Ben, Joel, Jeremy, Tim from Folie and myself then carried the 50 foot extrusion and new forestay to the boat, attached the jib halyard to it and hoisted it up to the top of the mast. A nerve wracking process as it looked like the foil was bending too much. The whole forestay and foil was as bendy as an Olympic pole jumper's pole, but just a lot longer.

To explain how the whole setup works, the forestay has a fitting on each end with an eye hole in it, with one part attached to the mast near the top and the other attached to the roller furler mechanism at the bottom. The forestay is put into a long metal tube that has about 10 5 foot sections and a similar number of 4 inch sections with 4 stainless steel Allan wrench type screws; and is called an extrusion or foil. The sail is then put on the foil by means of sliding it on into one of two grooves in the foil. The jib halyard then pulls the sail up the front of the mast.

Once we're done hoisting the forestay and foil, its 'beer thirty.' Ben, the rigger joins us for a couple of Bitter beers. After that Joel cooks steaks on the back of the boat using the grill while I cook some baked potatoes in the micro wave oven and some spiced green peas on the stove top.

After dinner and dishes, Jeremy goes to bed; an early night for him. Joel and I sit in the cockpit trying to figure out when the forestay problem started, and what happened to make it fail.

First, when did the problem start? We're convinced that it started when we were in Fiji on July 18, when a rigger put a new backstay and D1 wire on the boat. We took down the jib so he could inspect the forestay. When we put the jib back up, two things were different. First, a shackle that was attached to the upper halyard swivel shackle was taken off by us, because we'd had shackles fail regularly on the trip, and the shackle on the shackle did not have a hole in the end of the pin so 'seizing' wire could not be used to make sure it didn't fail. Secondly, when we put the sail back up we had a little difficulty with the jib halyard twisting around the forestay. We untwisted it, but did we entirely? Was there still a wrap around the forestay at the top of the mast not visible to us? Or did we somehow get a wrap in the jib halyard around the plastic halyard wrap stop cap and pull it down below the bottom of the swage fitting? In either case, we're pretty sure that that is when the problem occurred that led to the forestay failing. Regarding the shackle we took off, that made the jib halyard at this point longer by 1 3/4 inches; and the manual says that the distance should not exceed 2 - 4 inches. If we were at 4 inches, then we lengthened that distance to almost 6 inches. The extra distance may have allowed the jib halyard to wrap around the forestay, and each time we rolled the jib out and in, which we did hundreds of times in 3 months, we turned the forestay a little to the right and then left, twisting the wire. Or, if when we twisted the jib halyard in pulling the sail back up, we somehow pulled the plastic top halyard wrap stop cap down a little bit, moving it away from the base of the swedge, that may have caused the problem. It's important to us to try to figure out how the rig failure occurred so we don't repeat it. So after figuring all this out, we 'celebrated' with a glass of wine. We then went to bed. (And the next day Joel suggested that we didn't do anything to cause the problem at all, that the stainless steel fitting at the top of the mast just failed like two others on the boat were failing (the 'swages' were bent when putting on, a no-no). So the bottom line is, we'll never really know whey the forestay broke. Mon Dieu!

In reading the Pro Furl Installation Manual, the instructions were quite specific 'You should have a distance of 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 ") between the top edge of the halyard swivel and the top end of the extrusions (foil).'

We also realized that in the days before the forestay broke completely, we kept hearing what we thought was the jib sheet slipping a little, making a little 'bang like' sound. We now know that those little bang sounds were individual strands on the forestay breaking, one at a time. There are multiple strands in the forestay wire (maybe 27,not sure?). Once enough strands broke, there were not enough left to support the rig, so the entire remainder of the strands then broke at once, and that was when we heard the 'BIG bang.'

So even though we ordered a new halyard upper swivel and received the wrong one, the one we have (not the new one) should work because now we don't think its broken. And the length that the forestay was cut to, based on the boat's specifications, was one centimeter longer than what's required. That's .39 on an inch. Not sure why the rigger made it a little bit longer like that, but he does know what he's doing.

To bed around 11:30 PM.

During the day the boat Andromeda left for South Africa 3 days early; and other boats are leaving Friday, a day before most of us will leave. Free & BrEasy (a Canadian boat) is leaving Friday, along with Sweet Peart (a Switzerland boat) and Civetta II (a East European boat - not sure what country). These boats are leaving early because they consider themselves slower boats than the rest of the fleet and therefore, by leaving a day early, they will not be at the end of the fleet until the fleet catches them in 5 days or so and passes them. As one of the smaller boats, we probably won't catch them, but the average bigger Rally boats will.

Brian Fox



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