WHAT TO DO AFTER A RIG LOSS

Communicate the situation as early as possible (in our case we were able to do this before the rig came down) with a Pan Pan call to a coastal radio station. This can either be through satellite phone or VHF radio, but remember as soon as you lose your rig you are also likely to lose your VHF aerial and radio communications. For us having a satellite phone was key. If you have spars in On a safety checklist you may have to tick a box saying you have tested your rig cutting gear on a piece of material similar to that in your rig. However, you also need to ask yourself whether the cutting gear will work in the same way when the rig, rods or Dyform wires are moving up and down in a rough seaway, all in different sync to the boat’s movement. We’d always thought that having an angle grinder was the answer to cut away all rigging but we discovered we were wrong. With the rig moving it was very difficult to cut a groove in the rod. It also produced sparking and metal files, one of which flew into a crew member’s eye. Carry multiple cutting methods. We found that with rods the only thing that worked was brute force, cutting a groove with a standard high quality hacksaw, we had replacement blades and three hacksaws so were able to have new blades and saws ready rapidly, so as to have no delays in the cutting. If you have a period of time – as we did – with an unstable mast that has lost its structural integrity, use halyards to triangulate it to strong points on the deck. This might be more effective in a calm sea but for us the pre-break movement in the rig at the top (4-5m of sideways flexing) was scarily powerful. Before the mast broke, the ricocheting of the halyards thanks to the enormous flexing of the rig caused damage to the glassfibre at the deck mountings. When the rig comes down, if you can be sure the prop is free of lines try to manoeuvre the yacht under engine so the rig is down-sea and away from the hull.