And then....this happens...
That's the jib halyard winch. Ripped clean out of the mast. We were hard on the wind but only in about 20 knots. My first thought was of course "Rot! Noooooooooo!!!!", but fortunately that is not the case. The wood is absolutely sound. It appears that it is just a case of the screws working over time (57 years) until they chewed out. Not a major to fix, and I'm already pondering using large stainless barrel-nut inserts so this can't happen again. When it all went pear-shaped we tried to furl the jib, but with the halyard slacked off it wrapped on the forestay. Ended up having to haul Simon to the masthead so we could untangle it and then drop the jib. A top effort from Simon, Alice and Sharon - a model of how to recover from an "Oh shit!" moment.
Correction: The mast was replaced circa 1970 (after a wee incident involving drug-runners, a hijacking, the US Coastguard and machine-gun fire ) so that is 46 years of working.
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