knot board said...
I once Super-Elmoed with such force that I now only bend the boom but also tore the spreader bar clean off my new harness. Funny thing is that the old harness lines remained intact, perhaps someone could invent sacrificial harness lines?
been done. Tom Chalko made up some lines that would detach on one arm; when you get launched, it would sacrificially break a replaceable piece. The idea was that you wouldn't get flung directly into the gear.
The problem was that point loading due to gusts and chop, was often higher than most catapults... It was interesting watching him sail, suddenly to have his lines release, then major crash.
Relatedly, one nice idea he had was to be able to easily detach the lines from the downwind side of the sail -> so that when speedsailing, you could remove the harness lines as a source of turbulence of airflow.