I dunno. In thinking about the forces on the mast after we lost the backstay, I think what kept the rig up was mostly the mainsheet sheeted in tight, possibly assisted by the topping lift. We had been beating into some steep seas and I think it was a shock load on the back stay that caused it to fail. FYI, it failed right as the wire exited the Norseman fitting and I suspect the silicone sealant (which has some ascetic acid in it) the previous owner had assembled it with instead using of polysulfide caused the failure. I have no recollection if it, but I think I released both the jib and main halyards simultaneaously (they were both led aft to the cockpit and held by adjacent rope clutches). I do know that I didn't lower them slowly, just pulled the tail ends out of the bag, made sure they would run free and opened the clutches so the sails would just crash down to the deck. The boat had both forward lowers and an inner forestay as well as the jib luff rope to support it, so had the forestaty gone, the deck stepped mast may have just rocked back a bit for the few seconds until I could get the load off the mast.

I was in the cockpit when it happened and there was no delay in my response. The sound was similar to a 410 shotgun going off and was accompanied immediately by the violent shaking of the bimini (the aft end of which is secured to the backstay. I knew immediately what had happened and literaly dove for the wheel to bring the boat into the wind to try to save the rig. The deck stepped mast may have rocked fore and aft a bit, but there was no damage. Had it been the forestay, my instinctive reaction would have been to turn the boat off the wind, so I think, but just don't know, that the rig would have survived.

We were fortunate that we were just 18 hours out of Vava'u, Tonga and had plenty of fuel to motor back to a safe harbor to affect repairs. We'll never know if I would have been able to repair the backstay while bouncing around in mid ocean. When we bought the boat, it came with a brand new spare halyard labeled "forestay" and built with Norseman fitings, so my plan A for replacing the backstay or one of the uppers had always been to just shorten that to the appropriate length. Imagine my frustration when I laid the new "forestay" and broken backstay out on the ground and the "forestay" was a foot too short. We wound up using about a foot of anchor chain to extend the length of it. That held together long enough to get us back to California.