Not Another day at the office?
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Mon 4 Apr 2011 18:42
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Monday 4th April 2226 Local 1526 UTC
07:47.04N 094:33.40E
Aw bloomin heck, what a day we've had. After being
concerned for a couple of weeks about adverse weather our concern now is to find
some sails for our wind (which we don't have and there is no sign of on the GRIB
files). We have been pottering around making almost no westing to the Maldives
today. We are East of the Nikobar Islands and North of Banda Aceh in the Andaman
Sea where the Christmas Tsunami of 2005 did its worst.
As I said I was fully expectant of boat problems
when setting off on this passage as for some reason there always seems to be a
batch of "issues" when we set of after any length of lay up at all. There must
be some reason for this but I cannot figure it out for now. The issues have
continued a full assault on what was a blank jobs sheet leaving Phuket. We were
fighting a strong defence on the assault (me mostly observing and
supervising Donald and Murdo - were arse up head down) and were holding our
ground yesterday.
Then this morning I discovered we had a sheared
mainsail furling foil. Sheared and dropped down the mast with the main still
inside it. Sheared with the broken bottom piece sticking up into the side of the
main. And tearing it. Sheared with the bloody halyard swivel pulled off the top
of the foil kind of sheared. If you can follow all that fine. If you can't and I
try to explain it all, my inbox will be full of "ask Trish to do a blog soon,
e-mails". So if you can't follow it, it means the sail is stuck up, stuck out
and there is no way of getting it down without being at the top of the mast.
Even then there is still no way of getting it out of the mast to get it down.
We had a bit of a debate about just leaving it up
as conditions were benign, but they are so benign that the sail is often a drag.
There are also squalls around and weather can and will change. The decision was
made to get the main down. Donald spent most of the afternoon at the top of the
mast. After all our efforts we ended up with the mainsail stuck in the foil in
the mast. Finally in desperation I rigged a halyard round the foot of the sail
and started hauling which pulled the bolt rope out of the luff groove
and started to pull the bolt rope out of the sail. Stalemate - and running out
of ideas. Then Donald came up with the genius idea of me using the grinder from
on top of the boom to grind a new higher feed and exit point for the sails
bolt rope to pull out of the foil and the mast.
It worked a treat! Remember this is a relative
term. All hands on deck got the sail down and miraculously all the vertical
battens out unbroken. That just left the eighty five foot foil freely clattering
around in the mast. So with Donald having already done more than his fair
share up the mast I headed up this time, though no higher than the second
spreader to rig bandages round the mast to hold the foil from crashing around.
It was a bit of a strain on my back but I guess it needs exercise to strengthen
it.
Nobody will believe me but all of this stuff has
been my staple diet for the last year and a half so it was to some extent just
another day at the office. Sometimes however you can get very pxxsed off with
"just another day at the office". Also today the fridge packed in. Yes and
the starboard Nav Light packed in too.
For breakfast tomorrow we will remove all the
access plates from the mast and unbolt and remove all its innards (gubbins). We
will then try to effect a repair by cutting and splicing the foil with a
modified reinforcement. While to some extent, as has always been the case, the
satisfaction of managing so far to repair everything that has had to be repaired
over the past year and a half, for some reason seems to compensate a little for
the disappointment and frustration at so many things going wrong. Today
however, though it was good to get the sail down, it did not in
any way compensate for the sheer disappointment at the breakage happening in the
first place.
We are now almost certainly going to go to Sri
Lanka to see if we can get some parts delivered or made there to create a more
permanent repair. I think I am going to give up on the advice of "experts" about
what is strong enough and what is not and engineeer the bloody thing myself
finally as I am fed up feeling like a guinea pig.
Crap day, Good night.
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