20/05/2014
23 15 00’N 60 00 00’W
After yesterday’s debacle with the Genoa I was a tad low when this happened and disheartened we brewed a cuppa and sod it, I used two teabags, it was that bad. As usual with a problem we broke it down into small parts.
1. The main had to come off the boom and needed to be stored neatly on deck, sounds simple but as soon as the main was inoperable the boat rolls badly.
2. Remove the Stack pack and bits of lazy jacks as I was not going up the mast to re-reeve them and they are not necessary to the operation of the boat.
3. Reeve the reefing lines back don the interior of the boom.
4. Replace mainsail with the first reef set and then sort out tying the tack to the end of the boom a la Heath Robinson.
5. Another brew!
Steps 1,2,4,5 were although time consuming and physically tiring, straight forward. Step 3 was one of the most frustrating couple of hours I have experienced. We tried stiff nylon line without success and we could not use anything solid because of the first 90⁰ bend. Eventually we settled on a round fishing weight with very light nylon and tried to roll this down the boom and around unseen internal obstacles. It was like two people trying to do one of those maze puzzles, you know, the ones with the ball bearing in that you attempt to complete after Christmas lunch but give up after 5 minutes due to lashings of after dinner port. Oh how we laughed, as we tried to get this lead ball down the boom and out of the reefing line exit. Just as the communication lines were melting, out fell the lead ball! We danced around like schoolchildren who had just found two blue sachets of salt in their salt and shake crisps. Once we had one line trough we used this to draw three heavier lines through and then pulled through the reefing lines.
After this we soon had everything ship shape and we were on our way once more.
The wind gods have departed and we are in a flat calm, the motor is turned on and we motor for 24 hours. We top the tank up and realise that even at low revs we are burning about 55 litres in 24 hours. Our strategy is then to turn the motor on when we are doing less than 3 knots this changes later to only turning the motor on when there is no discernable forward motion.
The self steering broke today, we have the auto pilot which is electric and the Windpilot which takes no electricity so this is the preferred helmsperson when batteries are low. The central connection shaft had sheared so I set about finding something to repair it with. After an exhaustive search the best solution was in the form of a carbon rod unfortunately this was one of my beloved fishing rods. I had to take a hacksaw to the rod and soon had a section which I could epoxy in place, repair done and we again have redundancy in our self steering so the sad loss is easier to bear!