Vendee Globe and other sailing around the world

I caught that segment about new specs for the masts next year to cope with enormous forces generated.
Felt sorry for the skipper demasted ...she was heart broken.😢
These daily updates are a roller coaster of emotions. Nice to hear her pal commiserate....so much more immediate now. (y)
 
The compression loads on the masts are in the thousands of pounds and all carbon so it’s really strong till it blows up . Usually breaks lucky at the first spreaders so you have a stump to jury rig . But what a painful slog to the next piece of land . Pip Hare has seven hundred miles to cover at four knots , that’s a long week .


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I was thinking that ....and no real ability to deal with adverse weather..a somewhat steerable cork. :eek:I assume she has a small sail rigged and some sort of ICE propulsion as well?
 
Think bubble on a pee pot . She will have a small sail up to keep motion forward and it also stabilizes the boat a bit , less bobbing . They do have a small diesel engine but I’m not sure how much fuel they carry , it’s usually a get in / out of harbour engine .


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crankcall said:
The compression loads on the masts are in the thousands of pounds and all carbon so it’s really strong till it blows up . Usually breaks lucky at the first spreaders so you have a stump to jury rig . But what a painful slog to the next piece of land . Pip Hare has seven hundred miles to cover at four knots , that’s a long week .


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Lots of thousands of pounds. I think the tornado was over 1000lbs of compression and it is a tiny bug compared to these. I never measured but 16:1 downhaul and it was a big pull to get the sail shape I wanted. Windsurfers are just under 500-1000 lbs of down pressure. Those are just static numbers, add a gust and the pressure will spike by a bunch. On our echo, my wife and I were both hiked out and everything went loose. The mast had punched through the hull. Whoops.
 
Most of these big boats use halyard locks , the sail hangs from the masthead , you don’t get the halyard running loaded back down the mast which cuts loads , alternately they will use a two to one block system which also helps , specially when your into a second or third reef when the halyard lock is no help. The trickle down technology is fascinating, but so stupidly expensive.


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crankcall said:
Most of these big boats use halyard locks , the sail hangs from the masthead , you don’t get the halyard running loaded back down the mast which cuts loads , alternately they will use a two to one block system which also helps , specially when your into a second or third reef when the halyard lock is no help. The trickle down technology is fascinating, but so stupidly expensive.


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Tornado had a masthead hook for the sail. Made it very interesting at the end of the day. If you couldn't hide from the wind it was an absolute bugger to get the hook released (need to pull on halyard and rotate mast simultaneously to try to get hook out of shackle, with wind, the hook liked to bind). Halyard pulled it up to the hook and was then left slack. Downhaul hard to bend the mast quite similar to a windsurfer. No ability to reef. Add some more downhaul and outhaul if you were terrified. It wasn't a relaxing boat to sail if there was anything more than a breeze but damn was it ever fun.
 
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