Replacement Mast Not Needed

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32016, 17 June 1969, Page 17

Replacement Mast Not Needed

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND. Rainbow’s owner, C. Bouzaid, left Auckland for Heligoland and the One Ton Cup yesterday with the welcome news that a new mast for his ocean racing yacht would almost certainly not be required. Extensive repairs had to be done on Rainbow’s alloy

mast after a wool bale crushed 18ft of it in an unloading mishap aboard the freighter, Leuve Lloyd, in Genoa two weeks ago. A German mast expert examined the spar and pronounced it “as good as new.”

Bouzaid received this news in a cablegram from Rainbow crew members, W. Schofield and D. Craig, who went to Germany with the yacht in the Leuve Lloyd. Schofield and Craig replaced the crushed 18ft section of the mast with two spare alloy extrusions that were shipped with the yacht in case of an emergency. “This is welcome news, I can tell you,” said Bouzaid yesterday as he and three other crew members—A. Warwick, R. Dickson and J. Woolley, prepared for their flight to Sydney. “We will still have a good look at the mast ourselves when we arrive in Kiel on Thursday, but it sounds now as though we will not need a new one,” he said. “It would have been quite a rush had we been forced to get a new one.” One well-wisher quipped that the “German expert” was probably a member of the crew of the German world champion one-tonner, Optimist.

The first race of five in the One Ton Cup series will be on July 14.