Saga of the sliders

Brian McIntosh describes what happened when his boat incurred catastrophic sail slider failure

A reader copes with sail slider failure

Iam a 62-year-old retired engineer sailing a 2001 Hunter Pilot 27, mainly single-handed in the sheltered waters of the Clyde and surrounding area. Every year I take a seven-day summer trip with my crew of two brothers, Duncan (68) and Bob (65), normally to the Inner Hebrides and the north coast of Ireland. This year we decided to strike out and sail to the Isle of Man. We left Largs Marina on Friday, May 13, sailing to Bangor Marina as a stop-off en route to our ultimate destination of Peel. It was around 61NM to Bangor, but we planned to complete the trip in around 12 hours, mainly under sail, as the winds were scheduled to be north to north-west with a strength of Force 4-5, and favourable tides once we cleared the Clyde estuary.

The winds were good leaving the marina, but soon died to more like Force 2-3 a little over a mile from our exit point as we passed the south end of Little Cumbrae, but we continued motor-sailing to maintain a speed of 6 knots. Around the south end of Arran the wind started to pick up, as did the previously placid sea state, and we experienced some turbulence going over the known overfalls just off Pladda Island, where the confused seas combined with changeable winds to cause a couple of near-broaches – a warning of what was to come.

Past Pladda and the overfalls, we turned on to a course of 210°, giving us a straight run to Bangor with no changes required other than any needed to cope with changing winds. We had caught the tide turning south so the wind was with it – but, as is customary with the North Channel, unless it’s a flat calm there are often some rolling seas trying to push the boat to one side or the other, which