Quality of lower spars for Radial Sail

Cindy Taylor

Cindy Taylor

Member
Yesterday the bottom spar of my husband's radial sail broke at the location where it meets the deck. It was funny to watch, the sail fell down in slow motion. The winds were close to 20 mph and we were having fun doing beam reaches. Luckily the winds had died down some when this happened. The bottom spar was purchased last year and hardly used. The place it broke was near where a sleeve is inserted at the vang tang.

Has the quality of spars gone down? Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks.
 
Something similar to that happen to a friend of mine about 2 months ago. He said it was due to his mast step, not the section. I didn't bother to ask anything else.
 
I don't think that the mast step had anything to do with the breakage in this case. We had to buy a new spar because the last one got bent when my husband sailed in a tropical storm for fun. The last spar survived several years in heavy 15 mph + sailing with no problems.
 
i have deffinitly found the radial bottom sections to be a lot weaker than the ones on the full rig. i started out this year with a perfectly straight almost new bottom section and after 5 weekends of pre-season training it is more curved than my old one. kind of ironic seeing as my old one was a cut down full rig section and was used twice as much as this one
we do have very strong winds here "Nova Scotia" but i still think the quality of the mast has some part of this
 
I totally agree. There is a serious problem with both bottom and top sections when sailing a radial. Has a peteion ever been done to get the ILCA to do anything about this? Personally I would rather pay twice as much for a bottom and top section if it meant that it didn't permanently bend.

It is absolutely insane that these sapars bend/break so easily. I am sure this is a major reaswon why people stop sailing a radial. The on costs are just too high!
 
The radial by design is thinner aluminum than a fullrig. This bendy bottom section is what makes the radial so different than a fullrig.

The most important thing to ensure you don't bend your mast is always let off your vang before you round the windward.

Also, just because you have a 15:1 vang does not mean you should super vang all the time.

If you really don't think it was your fault that your mast bent, you can send the spar back to the place who sold it to you. They will send it back to the manufacturer to test the spar. It is a gamble however, as they destroy it in the process of testing it. If it was a manufacturing defect you get a new bottom section. If it turns out it was your fault, tough luck.
 
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