Mast Down at Midnight

Cheers Arriba. I don't think the beam was fatiguing beforehand - if a beam is well designed then the loads will be kept under the fatigue limit up to a few tens of millions of cycles.

I would think that the loads that the beam underwent when the striker failed were close to the ultimate strength of the beam every wave and this may have got the beam close to failure then. Like you I worry about my seagull striker and the way people use them to hold up prodders - my prodder is usually stowed away. I have recently made a new prodder to fit under the catwalk. It is an old mono boom and will be more like the Sail GP prodders - led from the bridgdeck to the forebeam -also giving me somewhere to locate another staysail stay.

Maybe if you had run off square then the mast could have been saved - at least until you could wind on some halyard tension - but I would certainly not like to be in your shoes in a seaway. Thanks for the article and I hope to avoid the tribulations you faced by double checking my forebean and seagull striker.

cheers

Phil

Thanks for sharing Scruzin, nice bonus you got to save the rig, blessedly calmish conditions by the sounds of it.