I experienced one on mine 7 miles off the coast of St. Vincent and was looking on technical advice on how to deal with this.

My failure occured in mild conditions, 15k breeze. If anyone has similar age boats you should look at this problem as a friend who also had a boat the same age discovered the same problem. The root of the problem is that the stay terminated at deck level onto a stainless steel bolt (about 1 1 /4 dia) which goes int a large threaded bolt. The problem is the threads on this large bolt corrode over time and the bolt simply comes out of the nut which is welded onto a solid piece of metal on a structural rib of the boat. In retrospect, a rig inspection should include backing out this large bolt periodically. I changed rigging twice since I owned the boat (since 97), but really only dealt with the stays.

I had to have two new bolts rethreaded and now must cut the old nuts away and weld new ones onto metal plates at base.