Lower shrouds failure
22 October 2011 | closing on the equator
Kathy
Not the adventure we were looking for...when not 20 minutes earlier I erased from an email a statement that boredom is best, I was in for a real surprise!
I had just mentioned yesterday that if we ever get back to Mexico someday (as in we'd like to get there sooner than later) that we really ought to take the entire rig down (as in the mast) and clean her up inside and out, as Love Song is 30 years old now. So what happens this morning on the last 5 minutes of my 1230-0530 watch? I had just written in the log book and done a regular visual sweep of the horizon in the faint hint of dawn, sat back down and started to read to finish a chapter in my book. TWANG, THUMP, I jumped up and standing on my tippy toes looked out the cockpit roof over the cabin top and noticed the inner shrouds on the starboard side with the ancient BOSE speaker and the ratlines was hanging all cockeyed. WHAT? I had no idea the implications...but figured it couldn't be good. I whipped around and yelled down the aft stateroom companionway to Allen, "GET UP! Allen! ALLEN, (Whistled)" no response. I grabbed the beach towel covering the hatch and balled it up and threw it down on him. That woke him up! Wyatt kept sleeping (he was on the berth across the cabin). "The shrouds have failed! GET OUT HERE!" and he was up.
Harnessed up, we quickly furled the jib, then I started the engine and he went to drop the main. I could not believe my eyes, that with each wave, and there was a lot of them, as in never ending, that the base of the mast was lifting up off the deck and just as quick setting back down again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. HOLY COW. My adrenalin was really flowing now. Once we got the main down and we were going directly into the wind and waves, bashing almost Southeast, Allen figured that he was going to have to climb up to the first spreaders and loop some line around it to jury rig it some halyards through it and hopefully keep it from going over. I insisted on getting Morgan out of his cabin and putting him in the aft cabin with Wyatt, thinking that if the mast went over I didn't want it affecting my ability to get to the forward cabin. I got him dumped into my bed and now Allen was ready to go out.
He wasn't clipped in and when I asked him to he said he really didn't want to be clipped in up there where 1. he needed to be able to get out of the way if the mast crashed onto the deck and 2. that he didn't want to be clipped to the rig if it went overboard and sank! OK! So, there he went, up onto the brand new piled up mainsail (Dear Lord, we plead your mercy and ask that you keep that stick upright and give my husband gecko toes) to loop a rope around the mast below the spreaders and contain the spinnaker halyard and a spare through it. He climbed back down as I stood by the man overboard button. (Thank you Lord for watching over us and keeping us safe, and while you're at it could you please lend us a few extra angels to hold that thing up while my husband has to climb around securing it?). I am thinking, what is it about being offshore from Tarawa that people suffer mast failures? Our friends on Brickhouse had been dismasted several months ago in this vicinity. I remember hearing stories of the dismasting of another pilot friend and didn't really want to join that club.
So, jury rig one was complete and Allen went to work with blocks and the preventers, deciding that more obviously was needed. That meant he'd have to go up again. This time he tells me that I can come out on deck and help him. GREAT. Now two of us are on deck, but I clipped in. He told me that in an emergency you didn't have to be clipped in. Well I didn't want to become one more part of the emergency, so I stayed clipped on. Up he went again ("Oh Lord Our Lord How Majestic is your name in all the earth", thank you for your sunrise to let us see what we're doing out here, and please give my husband the strength to hang on up there, "And if you say, be thou removed, and be cast, it will obey you, if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you've got all the faith all the faith you need, walk along with the King, you can do anything, if you - if you have the faith of a little child!") I realized that my prayers were filled with old hymns and songs, and wanted to yell at the sea, PEACE, BE STILL! while my hubby's up there! I'm also thinking who needs this?!
Down he comes again, and we manage to eliminate 80 percent of the wobble. One last attempt he says, with these spare lines to pull it forward using the downed shrouds themselves. This time I am in the dinghy, which is mounted on the foredeck but has some inflated fenders underneath, which happen to roll slightly with each swell. Up he goes, and I am feeding him this line, which is starting to tangle in the footsteps and whatever else is flapping around up there. I know my bicycle went overboard from the old dinghy a few years back, and I do NOT want to think about that as I slip and slide, hanging on to the bow pulpit watching him go up. I can see and hear that his strength is flagging, (OK Lord, this is it, he needs your super strength, This is the Day, this is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made, I will rejoice, I will rejoice and be glad in it, and be glad in it. WHAT?!) and he drops back to the deck a few seconds later, totally spent, dripping sweat, and shaking. DONE! That's as good as it's gonna get we think, so now to decide on our course.
WHEW. Thank GOD we are motoring, still might go back out and pull the main off, just in case. We've got to get through the ITCZ and with that comes buckets of rain, which will fill up in all the slats and folds of the mainsail and dump unceremoniously on us when we're least expecting it. In the meantime, I went back to bed for another couple hours of ZZZ and now it's Allen's turn. Please remember us in your prayers as ever!