Weds 11th November - Lazyjack troubles

Bamarandi
David & Donald
Wed 11 Nov 2015 14:20

Position 22.00.925N 021.02.819W

The dolphins returned in force yesterday afternoon and entertained us for a while with a couple of trainees who had not quite yet learned the full flip so came crashing down mid jump once or twice.

2 other boats in the ARC+ fleet – “Distant Shores 2” a 14.9m Southerly 49 flying the Canadian flag, owned/skippered by Sheryl Shard and “Shelena” a 16.45m  Oyster 545 – Philip Scourfield - both called us on the radio for a chat as they could see us on their AIS. It was good to hook up with them and pass the time of day.

We can usually see some other boats navigation lights and we saw some periodically last night. After the dusty clouds during the day there was a very clear sky overnight again. 

Those of you watching our course may have seen some roundabout detours. Our gennaker broke free the previous day and caused us to make some course changes to bring it back aboard.

Last evening our main starboard lazyjack uphaul line broke where it goes through the spreader.  We check the rigging every day with binoculars and had spotted prior to arrival into Las Palmas that the port side was frayed and got to it just in time. We re-rigged it properly with a pulley rather than it just running through a hole in the spreader and looked at the starboard side at the same time but that looked OK.  The line broke suddenly and the sail bag side with the line flopped over the side of the boom.

The main sail was attempted to be dropped as the only way up the mast is in a bosuns chair using the main sail uphaul to effect a repair. The lazyjack lines hold up the sail bag either side so when the sail is dropped it sits inside the bag.  With one side broken it proved impossible to get the sail down safely. There were various changes to our course heading into the wind to attempt to drop the sail.

This morning saw a further successful attempt with various additional lines brought into play to strap the sail in and then a trip up the mast to repair the broken line. This was a difficult exercise in quite big seas and took 2 attempts with a lot of swinging about. Donald has a few cuts a bruises to confirm the job was completed. The whole team was hands on doing various jobs to help the repairs.

Overnight the wind was not helpful and whilst it blew at around 20kts it was mostly in the wrong direction meaning long periods of sailing away from our bearing.

We now have 382nm to go to Mindelo having completed 555nm. We did 179nm in the last 24 hrs - slightly less than previous periods - explained by the forced stops and detours to deal with the breakages we have had. We still averaged 7.5kts under sailpower other than when using the engines to assist with our problems.

Questions hanging in the air on board at the moment:-

  • What flavour soup will we have for lunch tomorrow?
  • Whose new shorts are best – Donalds or Glens ?
  • Were we really entertained by a Drag Queen in Las Palmas or was it some sort of delirium after a period at sea?
  • What entertainment awaits us in Mindelo!?!

Everyone is fine on board and enjoying the trip.

** Happy Birthday- Lots of Love - Many Happy Returns to Autumn Pollard **