While taking our mast down at the spring cup our goldspar now dubbed the black spar for its dark anodizing, we noticed it had a slight bend around the hounds. Dont know how this could have happened. I figured nothing was wrong as the section always seems to straighten under load. Stu and Nigel were convinced it affected our speed and we have now thrown up a new goldspar dubbed the silverspar for its normal silver anodizing. The mast has been tuned, and i spent a good 2 hours doing misc boat work this morning, so we should be almost all set for the week.
We all know how ingenious the Japanese are with small little things. Sailing is no different. In the past 4 years a new 470 mast manufacturer appeared from Japan as a division of YAMAHA, called Total Plant. They have some great masts and even better fittings. After giving the masts a go we finally decided they weren’t for us and turned to Gold Spar. Now Gold Spars are custom all around. You even have to cut your own holes for all the fittings. We decided Total Plant’s spreader brackets would be best as they seemed so robust. In the past 4 months we have now bent, broke and even sheared off the bolt which is used to open the spreaders. today in about 25 knots and big waves in Sanary, France, we sheared off one bolt, and bent the other. We didn’t even think this was possible but have agreed that maybe this isn’t the best solution anymore. Luckily we have some other Gold Spar masts which use a proctor system. Hopefully this can turn out to be a little more reliable and finally get us on our way. The worst thing about the situation is how it effects our training. We basically were out training for an hour, getting our asses kicked and wondering what was going on. Finally one of us noticed and that was it. Time to fix the problem and move on. �
