For the non-sailors who for some strange reason are reading this (Mum!) the forestay is a length of wire running from near the top of the mast to the bow, terminating as shown in these photos.
The front sail (genoa) flies from this wire. Ours is over 400 square feet (the size of a one bedroomed flat) and so when filled with wind you can imagine the lateral forces that play on the forestay.
And it seems that the tang, a narrow piece of steel standing above the central web of the bow fitting, is not man enough to take this strain forever – repeated lateral stresses eventually lead to metal fatigue and failure. Clearly this could be sudden and catastrophic and so as soon as we heard about it we had to sort the problem.
As a temporary failsafe measure, to make us feel safe whilst travelling to get the work done, we attached a high tension Witchard shackle just behind the tang and “tied” the forestay to that using dyneema cord (with chafe protection).
Fortunately we didn’t need to use that for long before having work carried out at Sanxenxo.