Two of the plastic outside buckles on the starboard trampoline broke yesterday. We were sailing in about 10 knots of wind down by Point Lookout, MD; in conditions that were pretty mundane for us - a few whitecaps and some chop.
Cindy (around 135 lbs) was hiked out on the starboard tramp, sitting in the right rearmost corner which is practically on top of the buckles. I was looking up at the sail tell tails when I heard a bang, the TI shook and slewed a little toward the right; I checked to see if Cindy was okay and discovered she was hanging halfway in the water - the buckles directly under her where she was sitting had failed. She was laughing, wasn't hurt and was able to easily pull herself up while I kept the TI steady. We have a policy of one hand always for the boat while sitting on the tramps and it paid off.
We could see from just glancing that the two outmost buckles had broken, so she stayed on the starboard tramp as far forward and close to the hull as possible for several miles, then retired to the front seat in order to eat lunch.
When we returned to the boat ramp for pull out, we took the photos below.
In addition to the ones that were actually broken, under close examination it looks like the three most outward buckles on both the starboard *and* port tramps were stressed, as the ones that didn't break have what looks like a light line at the base of the prongs.