Lessons of Mast Destruction

When life’s exciting, or at least noteworthy situations have arisen, I am usually doing something else and end up missing out on the initial action. In fact, I am usually in the head. Like in 10th grade when, through the vent connecting the lil’ boys’ and girls’ rooms, I overheard my long time crush saying to her friends that she was going to walk out of the bathroom and kiss the first boy with blue eyes she saw. I struggled furiously to hitch up my trousers, dribbled a bit, and made a mad dash for the door. “Finally! My chance!”, I thought just as I saw her. But I was too late. There she was, pressed up against the lockers, tongue in check with some blue eyed freshman. Since then, going to the head has always left me with some degree of anxiety. Sort of a, “Get in, get out”, mentality.

As was the case on September 25th, when the Schooner Zodiac had her Main Mast break in half. We were under full sail on the 160 foot Schooner Zodiac. There was a moderate breeze of no more than 15 knots, if that. We had just switched to the starboard tack and were close hauled. We were healing to a degree. It was fun sailing. A sunny fall day in Washington’s San Juan Islands. I had spent a few moments trimming the jib and then went below to use the head. Due to our heal, the shower door in the forward head had swung open and was in way of the toilet. I closed it. I took up position. The shower door swung open once more and gently hit my back. I used a free hand to push it shut behind me. Moments later I heard a very loud crash coming from on deck and felt the schooner level out. My initial thought was that we had gybed, that the trailing edge of our sail had unintentionally passed through the eye of the wind. But that sound was more menacing that sheets yanking on travelers and quarter bits. I struggled furiously to hitch up my trousers, dribbled a bit, and made a mad dash to get on deck. Just as I leapt through the companionway I shouted, “what happened?”. As the words were exiting my mouth I noticed the main mast before me. I noticed that the main sail was not were it should be. You know, up, full of wind, doing its job. The Main Mast had broken in half.



All that remained on board of the 127-foot tall mast was about 15 feet above deck. The rest, including the gaff boom and all the rigging, were over the port side acting as an incredible sea anchor. All other sails, jib, stay, and fore were still up. Other crew members were already at work on the Foresail. I ran forward to strike the head sails, taking two other crewmembers with me. Ian, the cook, grabbed the jib halyard, Paul, set to work on the working sheet, and I ran forward to the down haul. The sheet and halyard flew, I began running aft with the down haul. It slacked in the head rig before I got far. I stopped running and did what I could to hand over hand it, which was not much. The jib was down! On to the stay. Ian controlled the sheet and I let go the halyard. The Stay’sl was down. All that remained was the Fore. And it was not coming softly.



Something had fouled aloft. The peak was not moving. The throat came willingly. Perhaps to much so. The gaff was near vertical. I remember briefly at some point I helped to sweat the peak up a bit in attempt to free the fouled lines aloft. I then ran back to try and pull the sail that was down, aft. The crew at the halyards were now trying to swing the jaws off of the mast for a moment in attempt to redirect the lines aloft. Then, with the main sail accounting for a tremendous amount of drag, and the head sails down, the Fore gybed! I dribbled a bit. It had lowered a bit. A few of us were frantically trying to control the excess thrashing about the boom. The sheet was still a bit loose. I snugged it. Not enough. The port jib sheet was still at its cleat. The Jib being down now made the sheet available for me to use as a preventer on the Fore. I made it fast to the cleat and took the rest up to the boom, passed it through a bit of iron and led it back down to the pin. Good, no more swinging boom, but the sail was still not down and was sporadically taking wind. I don’t know if this next bit worked as intended. The crew was still working on the fouled peak. I grabbed a spare line that was coiled and hung on the fore shrouds and ran its end back to the reef point in the clue, which had lowered just enough to be accessible from deck. I half hitched to the grommet and looked for a pin, a cleat, anything that would serve as leverage to pull in sail. It was a vain attempt I think, I may have been holding wind at times as the sail continued to flail about. Then I saw the gaff, leveled out and lowering. The Fore was down.



I jumped on to the top of the main salon. The Main boom was still attached at the goose neck, but had fallen to port and was resting on the cap rail. The stanchions holding the life lines had been bent over the side like Ian’s spaghetti noodles from a couple nights before. The starboard main shrouds were still secure to the chain plates and were stretched across deck and over the side. I looked at the Captain for orders. He set me to work cutting the lace lines on the boom to free the sail. I began. He then crawled out on the boom, over the side, and cut as far as he could reach. Other crew were coming aft. I passed the lace lines off to them. We needed to get the main sail back on deck. We tried to pull it up as if we were furling it. No success. We were at the will of the current. A 5000 square foot sail along with hundreds of feet and pounds of line and cable were being swept under us and threatening our prop and rudder. We could not use the motor. We needed to cut the sail free from the mast and gaff boom in the water. Our primary small boat with a 30hp outboard was on its side, on deck, starboard midships.


Both small boats hang from falls in the mast shrouds. When the mast went, so did our use of the starboard boat. The Port side boat however, was useable. The stern falls were connected to the main, but the bow was secured on the fore shrouds. Putting the small boat’s stern in the water, the bow nose up, and a tremendous amount of pressure on the bow painter. I can’t believe it didn’t tear the rubber. I loosened the painter, struck the stern painter all together, and put a crew member to work on the bow falls while I went into the chart house for a PFD and handheld VHF. I jumped in the boat. The stern falls were still in the bridal and were caught in the spars, pulling aft and down. I cut the bridal at the stern and stretched as far as I could to reach the falls block. Fail. It went straight down. “Great”, I thought, “more things in the water that would need fishing out”. Still, it was no time to hang up on things that could have gone better. Time to get the boat started.

Throughout the season, my rotator cuff has known what it sometimes takes to get this motor started. One day, after I had been pulling countless times, the captain jumped in the boat and started it on his second pull. Thankfully, even though it was starting cold, it roared on my second pull. I killed the choke, the idle was good, and I shouted on deck to ease the bow falls and free her. Just as that was done, the captain handed me his red handled, serrated knife. My hands were busy, it was an inflatable boat, the knife went straight to be gripped in my teeth. The next thing I knew, the captain was in the boat with me and we went aft to begin knife work on all line connecting the sail to the gaff and the mast. I handed him his blade and steered the boat so he could cut. At this point, I think it had sunk in with most of us that although such a death inviting accident had occurred, no one was injured. There was a bump on the head but that was about it. It was a sunny day. Maybe 2-3 foot waves. We were aft of the schooner by now, freeing the peak. The captain stops for a moment to comment on how nice of a day it was and added, “that’s a pretty green”. The sail was held down below us, providing a pale backdrop for the sunlight to penetrate through the plankton enriched water and press up against. It was emerald, and he was right, it was pretty. An old sailing tradition came to my mind. I don’t know how it started. Kissing the truck. The tip top of the top mast can be called the truck. When a sailor has become intimate with the workings his vessel he may say that he has, “kissed the truck”. Just a few weeks ago I had been aloft in the bossun’s chair on the fore‘mst and I touched lips to the iron there, but never on the main. I said to the captain, “I wanted to kiss the truck, but it was awfully nice of you to bring it down for me.” He smiled and got back to cutting.


These are the tasks and observations I made while in the thick of it. Many other crew members were hard at work doing what needed doing to regain control of the ship. At the same time, the coast guard had arrived, and the motor vessel Kwaitek had received all of our passengers and was returning them to Bellingham. The captain had since gotten back on board and I was joined in the small boat by another crewmember, Worley. We spent a great deal of time continuing to cut the sail free, as crew on board had rigged some blocks and the windlass to help in hauling the tremendous sail back on board. This ripped the sail a bit. Some friends of the ship were out in their small motor boat, had seen that something was not quite right with our rig and came to offer assistance. One side of the main spreaders were sticking vertically out of the water. The mast itself was alongside the ship. Each roll of the small waves was pounding the spreaders up against Zodiac’s hull and up on to the boom, each time taking a little bit with it. We rigged a line to the spreaders and passed it back to the friends in the motorboat. They attached it to their bow cleat and tried at pulling the mast away from the ship, so that Worley and I could get in closer to see what knife work remained. And the whole time the most abundant supply of Eel Grass in Puget Sound was tangled in everything. For the time it took to cut each line, it took twice as much to clear the Eel Grass.

At length, the Main Sail was free of the spars and had been hauled on deck. The Coast Guard cutter, Terrapin, had been on looking since their arrival perhaps a half hour earlier. They even took up position to do their best in blocking the wake from a far off tanker, which was helpful for our precarious position in the small boat between the main spreaders and the hull. Unable to be sure that our propeller was free of the rigging, they were ready to tow Zodiac back to Bellingham. They even asked us a favor, or at least presented the request as such. To save them from having to use their super top secret high tech space age line launcher, they wanted me to pull up along side them to receive the bridal of their tow line and take it back to the Zodiac. We did so, Worley grabbed the line and soon after Zodiac was under tow back to Bellingham. We were still concerned with all the lumber still connected to Zodiac, so Worley and I remained in the small boat to be ready to trouble shoot and provide assistance. However after following the towing operation for a short ways it was determined that there was not much else we could do in the small boat so we rejoined Zodiac and hitched the boat to be towed astern. Coasty Cutter towing Zodiac towing a little bitty guy.

All was well at this point, or at least as well as it could be. We were in awe of the fact that there were no serious injuries. We arrived in Bellingham after 11 pm and spent the night at anchor. The next day we were able to free the ship of all the rigging and return Zodiac to her dock under her own power. The Schooner Zodiac is now getting a head start on her
“Winter Refit”.

(I will post more pics when I get my camera back)

Lessons Learned for a jack tar deckhand:

1. Always stay on the high/windward side
2. Your Rig knife: keep it sharp as shit and don’t ever leave the dock without it on your hip.
3. Your RIg knife: Use it ONLY for emergencies. This means no more shucking oysters, or cutting your steak, splicing lines, or even cutting up an old tshirt into rags.
4. Your RIG knife: Have it at least partially serrated. At this point you don’t care what the cut looks like, as long as it gets the job done.