Fixing the hydraulics
Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Sat 29 Oct 2011 22:55
|
I spent this morning in the engine room working on
the hydraulic system that drives the power winches. The drive unit was
removed, repaired and replaced in Canet en Roussillon before we set off, but it
turns out that the engineer who replaced it forgot to put nuts onto the four
bolts that hold the unit in place. We hit some fairly violent waves on the
way down to Lanzarote and one of them threw the entire hydraulic drive out of
its housing. The drive then dropped back down at an angle, narrowly
missing the steering gear. We were lucky. The hydraulics we can
easily live without, but that would not have been a very good time to lose our
steering.
It took a couple of crowbars to shift the heavy
unit back into place and then I bolted it down and added some retaining straps
for good measure. Remarkably, once the unit was back in place it just
started working again. I can only guess there is some sensor (hydraulic
oil level?) that detected the unit was tilted at a 20% angle and prevented
it from running.
This afternoon we waved goodbye to Ian and
Denise. Ian returns in two weeks to cross the Atlantic with us and Denise
is meeting up with us in St Lucia (assuming we arrive before or during the week
she has booked to be there!).
|