Then he cut out the bent section, removed the gooseneck from the forward end of the boom and attached it to the aft portion. Willow Wind resumed sailing, though with a double reef because the boom was then too short for the foot of the sail.

But Harrison wasn't finished. He started working on the forward piece of the boom, and when it was ready the crew dropped the main and fitted the old piece into the aft section. Then they could sail with only a single reef.

"Like I said," Siegal smiled, "my boy friend is a genius."

No less resourceful was the crew of Endeavor III, 800 miles from Honolulu. As it usually is when these incidents occur, the skipper was below, where anyone should be at 1 a.m.

"It sounded like a shotgun going off," Bell said. "Somebody said there was rigging on the deck."

Never a good sign.

The starboard forward lower shroud had parted, inverting the middle of the mast to port. Long curly cues of wire were unraveling off the aft lower shroud. It's hard to imagine a mast any closer to collapsing but still standing.

"First thing we did was douse the chute and let the halyard run," Bell said, "and then we lowered the main sail."

With no moon and an overcast, Neil Beaton said, "It was so dark we couldn't even see where the water was."

Bell had some spare steering cable on board, and at first light Paul Thornton was hoisted up to the spreaders to attach it as a new lower shroud. Additionally, the vang was moved to the rail and a wire rope was rigged through a block to a winch.

"We kept that real tight," Beaton said.

The crew would check it often by twanging it like a guitar string. If the pitch was too low, they'd crank it tighter.

Bell's wife and co-skipper, Eleanor Clitheroe, learned on the day between the Cruisers' aloha dinner on the Queen Mary and their start June 29 that she'd have to go home to take care of some business.

"She's gonna be mad when she hears what she missed," Bell said.