L'Eau Commotion Westabout

4:00pm Tuesday 9th January 2018 ( UTC-4 ) If you had had occasion to study the meandering course of L'Eau Commotion in the wee small hours of this morning you would have rightly come to the conclusion that the skipper just could not force his eyelids to open or his feet to hit the deck. The breeze had gently eased and as is its custom in these parts with no fanfare swung round to a headwind and it had paid no attention to my sleepy hopes that it would remain true till at least sunup. But that was only part of the problem. Looking at the vanes wild gyrations I regretfully concluded that the 8mm rod actuating the tiller shown in the above photograph must have failed. Thoughts of Bob McLeod's remonstrances " Bill, you are starting to make a habit out of this" raced through my mind with the prospect of having to slink into Stanley. All this as I donned the full paraphernalia and got on the right side of a hot black brew. Boy Scouts have nothing on me with regards to preparations for a cold and tricky task. To my great re lief all that had occurred was the steering paddle had been jolted out of plum, most probably by a piece of the kelp seen floating around in patches over the last couple of days. Simple though the fix was it still involved dismantling the steering lines and resetting them with the regulation number of stuff ups ( Three ) The substantial bolt acting as a friction pivot had been done up pretty tightly with two 17mm spanners but when I reset the paddle in a straight line just a little less tension was applied. Forty odd years ago a patch of kelp had wiped off the spade hung rudder on my Triton 24 resulting in a stopover in Stanley of six months and I have no wish to repeat this, however warm the welcome may be. Because of kilobyte restrictions on photos I will send this off. --------------060103010507070007060204--