What are the risks?
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Wed 28 Sep 2011 18:27
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Wednesday 28th September 1727 UTC 1827
BST
11:05.877S 012:58.691W
Wind: SE 14 Knots, COG 305 Deg True, SOG 6.5
Knots
Not much to report today. The skies are still
grey and I have not seen the sun, the stars or the moon for a long time now! I
am sure the sun is there as it gets bright every day about 0730. But the stars
and the moon? Where on earth are they?
This dense cloud cover worries me a little bit. The
sea temperature is now up to 24 C and I am sure I must surely start to see some
thunder storms soon. The Doldrums are still over 1,000 miles away though and I
would definitely expect to be in amongst the squally weather then. If all went
to plan that would be about a week away. But there's a lot of water to go under
the keel before then. A lot could go wrong.
Looking at the risks. Yes let's do a Risk
Assessment. Hang on a minute till I get my hard had and safety boots on and yep
thats it, my Hi Viz vest! Ahhh I must be safe now with this stuff on
eh?
Right, the risks. People don't normally want
to talk about these things in case it tempts fate or more importantly
upsets family at home. Never mind, I am not superstitious and my family at home
are well aware of the risks and anyway its good to talk these things
through.
The "biggies" first. The keel falls off. That means
13 tonnes of expensive lead shooting to the bottom of the ocean and the mast
pointing at it. This is a very low risk on this boat as it really is built
like the proverbial toilet around that keel and man you should see the bolts. I
think four would be enough but there are seventeen. Visual examinations at
Capetown above and below the water all look
excellent.
The rudder falls off. Well it did work a little
loose at the headstock bearing in the southern Indian Ocean. It had in fairness,
had a very hard life - sailing 0ver 10 years worth of peddle to the metal
sailing in 18 months. This caused a bit of alarm and simply tightening the
retaining nuts and bolts would have been fine, but those nice people at
Discovery sent someone down to the Cape to add additional reinforcing to spread
the enormous loads in heavy and hard sailing. I check it regularly and it is
solid. No probs there then..
The mast falling down. Well that would be a little
bit of a bitch. If it did fall down it would be very difficult for me to cut
everything away quickly enough to prevent the mast holing the boat. You remember
the young guy I met in Capetown who was sunk in this way near Tristan da Cunha?
I have a grinder with cutting disc at the ready at all times but the mast
is huge in section, supported by heavy rigging some of which we had renewed
at Capetown and well swept spreaders making for an inherently stable
structure. No problems expected there and we had three different
inspections in South Africa to determine the banging noise coming from the mast
on the passage to Durban. I concluded that it was a loose D2 fixing at the mast
though the riggers didn't agree. There is one port side D2 with a single wire
stranded. I'm not concerned about that.
The boat leaking and sinking. Well yes, that would
be a problem but all through hull penetrations are of the highest quality and
completely sound, all with wooden plugs taped to them. No that's not an issue
but assuming I avoid the rocks like Ascension and Cape Verde the danger from
sinking is collision with another vessel or more difficult to legislate for -
hitting a submerged container. The former is about my seamanship but not much
can be done about the latter. However at these speeds I could probably bump a
container and push it along in front of me! In fact maybe I am! Maybe
that's why I am so slow......
The real biggest risk that I see is fire. An
electrical fire, which of course I have no reason at all to expect, I think is
the biggest risk to the boat on this journey and I see that as a minimal
risk.
That's the biggest risk I see with the boat. The
actual biggest risk to safety is falling off the boat. That, I must be and am,
super vigilant about. I must take especial care when moving around day or
night when suffering from extreme tiredness. There are many more risks from
injury and of course if anything serious did happen it would be none of the
above.......
Anyway with a high viz vest, hard hat and safety
boots what could possibly go wrong?
Oh yes! A few more things to tell you. I have been
eating well and the other night I made a rissotto with the two lobsters
which did a dinner and a lunch and I have to confess I had to have a wee glass
of wine with it. Bloody marvelous!
Last night and today, it's stewed sausages from the
freezer courtesy of my old crew before she left Capetown. Good grub, hard
to beat.
Today was spent trying to fix the compressors for
the freezer and fridge. The compressors are getting a very low voltage supply
from the batteries due to some sort of resistance in the voltage supply. That is
what is causing the problem but I don't know yet what is causing the low
voltage. The battery levels are strong. A bit of removing of PCB's shorting out
terminals to short out the low voltage start control resistor, etc etc
have given us a temporary fix and hopefully I can
avoid losing all my food supplies or contracting food
poisoning.
Now what else? Yes I saw two birds today, the first
in a long time.
And.... oh yeah! www.blog.mailasail.com/rhiann.marie
has been the number one blog on the Mailasail server over the past month and the
second most read blog with almost 24,000 individuals visiting the blog! This is
absolutely incredible! I am told that the only one blog that has more than that
in the last two years was because it was on the national news. For what I don't
know, but I think I can guess......
So thanks to you all for your recommendations
to friends etc I will try to keep the blog interesting, though tonights is not
very exciting. Having said that I would like it to stay that way for the next
month. It is 18 days since I left Capetown and I am over a third of the way
down the track. I hope to be in Cape Verdes in two weeks time barring any
disasters........
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