Sliding south, and west....

Persephone... Cruiser/Racer
Nigel & Karen Goodhew...
Mon 17 Sep 2018 08:35
The welder duly returned, having beefed up the pilot quadrant, and took most of my euros, while handing me back the now shiny, polished stainless steel item. In very broken english, he explained that he thought the fabricator who initially made it, had failed to quench it well enough after welding, which had made the steel brittle, “like glass” he said. So the last few years of serious exercise....4 Atlantic crossings and numerous passages in between, had taken their toll on the tangs by which the quadrant is clamped to the rudder post, and 2 of the 4 of them were broken and one other showing signs of deterioration. Now they are double thickness, newly welded and quenched.....

The sail to Cartagena tested the new part robustly. After leaving Alicante, we decided to pass outside the Ilas Tabarca at the southern end of the Bay of Alicante. This meant fine reaching, gaining to windward a little before bearing away for the main part of the journey, a beam feach in an easterly breeze. But the first bit was interesting!

We started with a single reef in the main. But as the wind piped up outside Alicante, we decided, at 30 knots, to slab in the second. All good, but in doing so, the little fork in the mast gate fell out and dropped in the sea. So the sliders for the sail have to be manually moved across the gate when the sail goes up, or down.

All went well in the end, and the wind eased in the afternoon. The reefs were shaken out and we even flew the spinnaker for a while. But as evening fell, the summery storms started to brew up again out to sea.

In the end though, we sailed into the outer harbour at Cartagena without further incident and around 16.30 were tied up, stern to in the now familiar marina alled YPC.

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