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by nexus6 662 days ago
The yacht had the 2nd tallest mast (tallest aluminium mast). The tornado/waterspout snapped the mast, which made the ship unbalanced and capsize. It sank quickly after that.

Not that out of the ordinary. There was another waterspout photographed in Italy that same day; they’re not that uncommon.
2 comments
rightbyte 662 days ago
> snapped the mast, which made the ship unbalanced and capsize. It sank quickly after that.

Hardly.

The weight of the mast is bogger all compared to the keel. You are supposed to have sails in those which give a perpendicular force to the mast.

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trhway 662 days ago
>snapped the mast, which made the ship unbalanced and capsize.

that sounds strange for a sailboat designed to keel a lot. And the unbroken mast has higher leverage, yet the boat keels without capsizing. And capsizing is usually not that great an issue too.

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katzinsky 662 days ago
As someone with a sailboat who sails just about every week (since I live on it and have to keep moving) I'm also having a pretty hard time understanding this one.

In high winds removing the mast should make it less prone to capsizing just like reefing would.

EDIT: Oh I see they're thinking it's the waves not the wind.

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foldr 662 days ago
Lots of independent sources suggest that the mast can increase resistance to capsizing and that losing a mast can make a boat more prone to capsizing.

https://www.morganscloud.com/2008/08/01/sailboat-stability-c...

Overall, the topic of sailboat stability is complex enough that books have been written on the subject: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o3edvBByudgC&o...

I would not dive into conspiracy theories on the basis of whatever back-of-an-envelope intuitions you might have here.

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foldr 661 days ago
Also here: https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f55/can-a-mast-be-too-t...

>Counterintuitively [a boat with a tall mast] will be be more capsize resistant, capsize is a dynamic phenomenon and increase mast height provides a vastly disproportionate increase in roll moment of inertia which resists capsize. Stability is a static phenomenon even when the boat is moving thru the water and provides little if any resistance to capsize.

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