Blog 28th Nov - ALL STOP!

Global Yacht Racing's EH01
Global Yacht Racing - sponsors: Caspian Services
Sat 28 Nov 2009 11:48
If you where wondering why the tracker showed us not going very far or very fast yesterday between around 1430 and 1730 UTC its because we where, well, stopped!
During routine checks I discovered severe chafe to the steering cables and so we needed to replace them. Steering gear on the bendy toys is either vectran or spectra cables around the quadrant, there's no wire or chain so this means less likelyhood of catastrophic failure but does often result in chafe and that was our issue. We replaced the cables prior to leaving the UK and they should have been good to the Caribbean, but they had streched slightly and in the heavy running conditions that little bit of movement was enough to work through about half the strands. Lucky I spotted it when I did as if they had gone doing 10kts under kite the result would have been interesting to say the least.
Changing the buggers at sea is a pig of a job though. We had to drop all the sails and hold the quadrant in place with the emergency tiller (great bit of kit, thanks Beneteau...) then yours truly spent a cramped, rocky and frustrating 3 hours in the 'gimp' locker trying not to loose any fingers. Still all done, so long as we dont trash these as we no longer have spares all is well once again.
During the stop we did a few other repairs. When we droped the main we noticed chafe to the top slider webbing so the crew renewed that and we sorted some chafe to one of the kite guys. then it was back up with the kite and off we go again.
We all wonder if our 1600 position (now up to 7th, or was then anyway) would have been any better without the stop?)
Dropped the kite this morning due to some interesting clouds and currently under poled out headsail and full main. Not my favourite rig as hard to steer to and very rock and roll, still hope to get the kite up later.
'Sweet' watch on deck at the moment listening to some tunes and re living the mispent 'Essex boy yoof fing', with some dodgy singing; bloody racket (and I'm from Essex!)
We reckon our (ruff) halfway point is around 150 NM away so I'm looking forward to a change of shorts and T shirt and perhaps a litttle celebration Dairy Milk chocolate bar for the crew; just one square mind as I dont want them going soft!
Laters....
Andy.