And remembering how those EBay execs went after those people only for bad reviews, one can imagine what the people like this can do when it comes to real money. And the scale of the money involved here can buy impressively "accidental" accidents.
Not that out of the ordinary. There was another waterspout photographed in Italy that same day; they’re not that uncommon.
Hardly.
The weight of the mast is bogger all compared to the keel. You are supposed to have sails in those which give a perpendicular force to the mast.
that sounds strange for a sailboat designed to keel a lot. And the unbroken mast has higher leverage, yet the boat keels without capsizing. And capsizing is usually not that great an issue too.
https://www.morganscloud.com/2008/08/01/sailboat-stability-c...
Overall, the topic of sailboat stability is complex enough that books have been written on the subject: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o3edvBByudgC&o...
I would not dive into conspiracy theories on the basis of whatever back-of-an-envelope intuitions you might have here.
>Counterintuitively [a boat with a tall mast] will be be more capsize resistant, capsize is a dynamic phenomenon and increase mast height provides a vastly disproportionate increase in roll moment of inertia which resists capsize. Stability is a static phenomenon even when the boat is moving thru the water and provides little if any resistance to capsize.
In high winds removing the mast should make it less prone to capsizing just like reefing would.
EDIT: Oh I see they're thinking it's the waves not the wind.