In our opinion, one of the problems with media coverage in sailing is that you rarely, if ever, hear about the dark side of things. When things go wrong. When someone fucks up. When people get pissed. You know, the good stuff! We received this particular bitch fest a while back, verified the particulars, and found there to be enough to go with. Enjoy.

I've been following your coverage of Ocean Planet. I have a particular interest in Bruce's progress and experience with the novel rig, since the same rig has turned out to be the salvation of my own boat. S/V Barbara Ann was designed by Sparkman & Stephens, built in Nova Scotia, and launched in late 2001.

To say that the Carbospars-built Aerorig was a failure on my boat is a gargantuan understatement. It has been removed and chopped into pieces. I couldn't even give it away because of the manufacturing flaws. The only part that's been salvaged is a section of the mast head that went to some students at MIT that are building a catapult to launch magnesium into the Charles River. The design is sort of a giant middle finger to be flicked.

Without boring you with too many of the details:

• The mast was 100% overweight because Carbospars covered up their bad laminate by adding extra layers of fiberglass. It was supposed to weigh 1800 lbs and actually weighs 3950 lbs. This, of course, made the whole rig mechanically unsound and also made the boat top heavy. We would heel 15 degrees at the dock in a 15 kt wind.
• The outer skin of the mast developed bubbles all over it about three months after launch. A cosmetic problem but also an indication of deeper problems.
• The hydraulic main halyard and boom furler just plain never worked. Almost every single time the main was raised it either got stuck and had to be cut down, caused a hydraulic leak that shot oil all over the deck, or just wouldn't go up at all. We went through four replacement halyards in less than six months.
• The excess weight for its size led to oscillation when the boat pitched. In six foot seas under power, the boom would sway up to three feet vertically, even when tied down tight. We broke padeye, shackles and the wheel lock on our steering when one of the tiedowns dropped low enough to get wrapped around the wheel.
• The wing section coupled with our instability made mooring a nightmare. We'd pull up to a mooring, come to a stop and seconds later we'd be sailing sideways at 5 kts. under bare pole. Actually, we also broached twice in a storm under bare pole.

Here we are, merrily chopping up the old rig.

As I said initially, a clone of Ocean Planet's rig has turned out to be our saviour. Since our boat was designed for a small foretriangle on an unstayed mast, changing to a conventional stayed rig would have been nearly impossible. It turned out that the mast positioning, righting moment, etc. etc. all fell into place to build a nearly identical rig to Ocean Planet. Ted Van Duesen and Robbie Doyle have been tremendously helpful (and sympathetic). Carbospars, on the other hand never supported their disaster at all. They even scheduled me to have warranty work done in Newport RI last summer, and then when they saw the extent of the problems, skipped town without paying their yard bills.

Bill Southworth

06/09/2003