crazyjockey said...

Sailhack said...
One was my first mast, broke mid sail in flatwater, but I guess going by the contition of the nose of my original board, it 'may-have' made contact with it on more than one occasion during many in-harness-but-not-footstraps catapults whilst learning.

I've done several of those ones...even cracked the paint on the nose of my board. How worried should I be?

crazyjockey,

No point worrying until it goes...Knowing how to rig a broken mast comes in handy, there's an old thread on seabreeze with a link.

The issue is, you drop your mast on the nose of the board several times through the learning stage, impacting in the same spot each time, this cracks the carbon inner lining (which you can't see) and weakens the mast...eventually, whilst rigged, and tension on this point, without notice the mast will go. I wouldn't stress too much about it, as it's still a reasonably rare occurance, and you might get years out of it yet.

[edit] found some safety info that all w/surfers could take a bit from...

http://www.iwavesolutions.com/lefebvre/Windsurfing/Articles/safety.html