Busy day
Around the Atlantic: ✔ Next stop: Circumnavigation
Ron Noordhoek
Thu 3 Feb 2022 02:00
15:06.206N 050:04.610W
Today was a repair day.
The other day we noticed that the code 0 halyard had shave marks so we went up the mast to check it out. John went up the first time and noticed the casing was damaged all the way through. So we decided not to fly the code 0 anymore. Later Alex went up and took some foto’s. That didn’t show any serious damage. Next day John went up a second time. The foto’s he took were out of focus but showed some white spots from the core? We figured we could fix it with some ducktape. This time Ian went up.
He took some foto’s too and for some reason the shave marks on the Alex’s foto’s had worsened. We hadn’t used the halyard and it had been down all the time??
Anyway, we rigged the code 0 and when the winds picked up we went wing on wing. That really made a difference speedwise.
Just after dinner, John was on watch, the boat started to move in circles. It turned out that the connection of the starboard rudder had worked itself lose from the hydraulic cylinder. How it managed to do that is still a puzzle. It took John and me quite some time and effort to fix it. We drifted for half a mile but in the right direction.
Later when I came on watch there was this AIS alarm. I turned it off but it kept going of every couple of minutes. I had no clue what set it of but when Alec came on deck, he noticed the a boat was following us. At a very close range even. So close that I hadn’t noticed it earlier.
The AIS information showed a SART. Somebody or in any event a personal beacon was activated. Since it kept following us it had to be on the boat.
We woke up Ian, his vest was okay. Then we woke up John and it turned out the Nicole’s beacon has accidentally was on. When John had turned it of, the alarm disappeared and everything was okay again.
Time for me to get some sleep.