Boat fixing

I recently made a solo trip to Lesser Kinmen (also known as Lieyu), or at least close to its coast. Like most of the other islands opposite Xiamen, Kinmen belongs to Taiwan, and we can not land there without permission. You can get pretty close though, and I have been within 50 m of the shore of several of these islands without a Taiwanese border patrol shooting (or waving) at me. Sometimes you can see them though, with a rifle hanging from their shoulder.
This time I set off on a south-bound course towards Dadandao (also Taiwanese), but turned East before reaching it, heading towards Kinmen. The wind was good, ESE, and being just by myself, I had a good speed. After about an hour of sailing, I zipped along the sandy beaches of Kinmen, with a good view of the nice villas and some fortifications left over from the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in the '50s. I didn't see any people, except two figures walking on the beach. They didn't appear to show any interest in me though.
Just before reaching the far corner of the island, I turned towards a small group of rocks, just to get a closer look. The wind fell, and I was briefly caught in a weird current, which actually drew me backwards, before I could adjust the sails to catch a tiny bit of wind which could pull me out of there. It was a strange sensation. There are some sandbanks in the area, noticeable by short breaking waves and very local disturbances of the water surface. After a short while I was sailing past the rocks towards Xiamen again, and along its long beaches on the way home.



The wind was blowing again, with more force than when I left, and while greatly enjoying the good ride with rolling waves from behind, I suddenly heard a loud bang. I didn't notice anything falling down, so I just continued. I relaxed the main sail a bit, reducing speed somewhat, just to make sure.
After returning to the beach, I noticed something actually had broken. One of the joints of the aluminum frame had fractured. It was already cracked, and Paul had reinforced it with rope. This probably saved me, because the outer part, where one of the steel cables holding up the mast is attached, had separated itself from the rest of the structure and was only held in place by the ropes.
Clearly, this boat was not fit for sailing anymore. The problem is that it has not been maintained very well, and salty seawater has been slowly eating away the aluminum parts. We still don't have a permanent location to store and wash our boat after sailing, so we just pull it up and leave it there. Hopefully we will have a permanent location soon, but that's another story.
Today I went out to take another look at the damaged boat, and decided to fix it at least temporarily, so I could go out sailing again. We had some left over ready-made steel cables with eyelets, and I found one of exactly the right length to wrap around the frame once, and hooked it up with the rigging using a stainless steel shackle (harpje in Dutch). Now I can go sailing again!