Just a little about carbon masts that most people are unaware of.
Firstly most people relate breakages of carbon masts that occurred with A class masts in the past to the same way that aluminium masts broke. That is that the aluminium section under extreme bending/shock loadings folded on the compression side of the section and bent etc. With a carbon section although the end result may appear the same that is not exactly what happens. In layman terms we can say that carbon fibre has enormously good properties under compression but is far less strong under tension/stress/twist loadings, so that unlike an aluminium section that will “fold” on it’s compression side wall, in the same type of situation a carbon mast “breaks” on the other side of the section wall I.E the fibres are literally pulled apart on the tension loaded side. We extensively tested “to failure” several standard sections of carbon A class masts before we decided on a carbon laminate for our masts on the F14 and we found that in the vast majority of breakages that occurred to the A class masts all failed approx 600mm to 800mm below their hounds and had literally been ripped apart on their tension side. This 600 to 800mm distance is where the greatest load will occur on a mast when it is “slapped” onto the water forcibly. The hounds act as a fulcrum and the diamond wires restrict the section below the hounds in their ability to “flex” and disperse the shock as much as the unstayed section above the hounds. To obviate this potential failure in our sections we simply have added a section “patch” of 300gm/sqm of Kevlar to the laminate from just above the hound location to approx’ 1m below the hounds. This has to date proven completely successful and apparently seems to have made our mast sections “bullet proof”