Has anybody found certain brands of board to be vulnerable to this kind of thing?
Yesterday (christmas day) I found myself standing in the shorebreak like a complete clown, holding onto a rig with no board attached... upon recovering said board, I found a decent-sized chunk had been extracted from the mast track. The mast track had already been similarly damaged and repaired once before, but this new breakage was a good few inches forward of the repaired spot, and so not related to the previous damage. Hey, thanks a lot, Santa!
It's an AHD Free Diamond 65; my second AHD board and I've loved both of them. I'm getting a Starboard track put in, cannibalized from an old board. I find it surprising that this same board has had the mast track shredded twice, since I've never encountered this phenomena before, and believe you me I've given my equipment some harsh treatment...
All of them are so similar I doubt it is a brand thing: they are all glass reinforced plastic of the same shape etc, not like the 70's and 80's with all the different systems.......so thus I suspect a batch problem
Have to agree with that nebs, but I've never come across a mast track that breaks like willy describes, a good wipe out wood probably just rip two holes in it. I've used chinook mast tracks for years, and never a problem with the track itself, did have one come a little loose a while ago thou.
I have a Katana fibreglass/polyester wave board that was given to me some time back - Im fixing it up. One of its problems was that it had a large chunk of its chinook mast track missing, in the mid section - it had fractured out. I have since routed it out and replaced with a new mast track - but this got me thinking - as to why the original failed in this way in the first place. The conclusion I came up with is that the deck was curved either side of the mast track - meaning that the round 6" plastic washer (for want of better word) - under the hand tightener didnt contact the board for the better part of its surface. When the washer has good contact on a flat surface of the board - this helps dissipate energy away from the mast track through the board. If the washer & mast base only contacts a decreased surface of the board - it puts a huge load on the nut under the mast base - which exerts a leverage affect - the result being in my boards case a chunk of the mast base failed. Cant comment on your board not having seen it.
Good advice. I've actually got an old Mistral 2-bolt deckplate I picked up just before I came here, similar to the chinook one. I guess that would do? I haven't started using it cos it means buying a new mastfoot, but what the heck, it's only money, right? The windsurfers' creed!
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