It was poignant to read the story of the 84 yr old who abandoned his Westsail 32 after its mast broke while heading for Cape Horn. Twenty-seven years ago this week I was finishing up preps to sail my Westsail 32 from New Zealand to the Falkland Islands on a voyage that would end up taking 52 days (Jan 9 to Mar 1, 1985). Some folks might find the preps we did to be of interest.

We took a boat that was already a well-found offshore boat, and did everything we could do to make her ready for the Southern Ocean. In particular, keeping water out, and keeping the mast up, were focal points.

For the mast, we replaced all the upper shrouds with the next size larger wire and Norseman terminals, and beefed up the bases of the spreaders. We replaced the running backstays along with a tackle system led to a winch, and greased the lines where they passed thru the blocks. We replaced the inner forestay stem fitting with a much beefier eye bolt. A sail maker went over all our sails, and we procured a couple extra storm jibs. The smallest was 36 square feet, and even that one would overpower the boat on occasion and need to be taken in.

To keep water out, we removed the dorades and bolted aluminum plates over the holes. We thru-bolted 1”plywood over the 2 deck hatches (next time I would use Lexan to let light in). We made inserts to wedge into the portholes should they break. We bolted a piece of 1” thick Lexan across the companionway to keep out boarding seas, and made a hard dodger out of plywood. It required some gymnastics to get down below, but strengthened that critical area.

We made a warp out of heavy line donated by the City of Auckland, and attached it to the boat by running a short length of chain thru each of the aft hawse pipes. We made a spare oar for the Sayes vane, and took the life raft off the coach roof and secured it to the cockpit floor (We also had a case of beer lashed there; we lost all the bottles when the boat was rolled shortly after leaving New Zealand).

Below decks, we rigged wire cables over the engine to secure it in place should the boat be rolled and the engine mounts break. We added a 2nd compression post under the deck-stepped mast, made of greenheart timber.

There were many other preps, but those are some of the main ones that come to mind.

The pic below shows a German engineering friend who was helping us get the boat ready, and my Canadian pal Rob who joined me for the trip.