Day 115 - Leg 6 Day 8 at Sea 'Boom - Be careful what you wish for'
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sat 17 Oct 2015 15:54
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The wind blew for a couple of hours on Thursday
lunchtime then died - engine on again. An hour later, we were sailing
again, and we passed a couple of whales. The wind continued to mess around
for the rest of the afternoon and the seas started to build from the
stern.
About 21.00 we received a gale warning on the radio so
we jibed the genoa (still poled out) onto the same side as the main and reefed
both sails - 2 reefs in the genoa and 3 reefs in the main.
We continued to sail overnight, the winds were around 25
- 30 knots occasionally gusting to high 30s but, as we were heavily reefed,
things were pretty comfortable on board.
The winds and waves woke me so I got up to see if
everything was OK. Ant was on watch and had just experienced a gust of 38
knots but, as I came on deck, it was back down to 30 and comfortable. I
said that I would get my oilies on and join him on deck to see if we needed to
do anything else but, before I got to the bottom of the (3) stairs, we were
being flattened by a massive gust of around 45 knots which, combined with a
freak wave was tipping the boat at an alarming degree and we were
broaching.
I ran up the steps and told Ant to release the
genoa sheet which would depower the boat and prevent the situation becoming any
worse. I then started the engine and gave it full throttle to give us
the speed to turn the boat and eventually managed to bring things into some sort
of normality although we now were faced with huge seas und 40+ knots
of wind. By this time, Paul and Sam were also on deck so I stayed in
the cockpit helming as the autopilot couldn't hold it, whilst the guys put on
their life jackets and went forward to sort out the mess.
The whisker pole that was being used for the genoa was
hanging vertically as the snapshackle had unclipped. This meant that the
block that led the genoa sheet to the end of the pole was sliding down
the genoa sheet and flying through the air - about 3 pounds of metal and
carbon. I warned Sam and Paul but then it slowly flogged its way towards
the end of the genoa sheet that was slowly slipping out of the block at the
stern of the boat. I could have asked Ant to try to grab the sheet but,
the sheet and block were thrashing around which made it too risky so we let the
block slide into the sea then retrieved the genoa sheet.
In the meantime, we had to try to refurl the genoa as
this was flying free so, trying to hold the boat on course, I managed to reach
the furling buttons and furl the genoa. Once this was out of the way, Paul
and Sam managed to get hold of the whisker pole which was hanging over the
guardrail and reattach that to the mast. Don't forget that this was in
very confused seas with 40+ knots of wind and 8 - 10 metre waves coming from all
directions.
We had a quick regroup in the cockpit, we had a torn
genoa, a missing block and would assess the rest in the morning. We were
flying only the heavily reefed mainsail and still making 7 knots so Paul and Sam
went down below to bed. Almost immediately, the winds started howling
again and the autopilot was struggling to deal with it. I went to the helm
to start to steer manually but, as I got there we crash jibed.
This can occur when the wind is coming from astern, say on the port
side of the boat, and either the wind or the boat changes direction. This
can force the boom across with tremendous force because, when you are
downwind sailing, the boom (and sail) are as far out over the
side of the boat as possible to catch the wind, and when this flies across to
the other side of the boat, it could actually take your mast
down. We had a preventer attached from a cleat at the front of the
boat to the end of the boom to prevent this from happening but, unfortunately,
this had snapped allowing the boom to fly across.
Rather than jibe back, I kept the boom on the
wrong side while we sheeted in and put the sail away. It was at this point
we noticed that we had damaged the boom and had a bend in it 2/3rds of the
way down. We don't know whether the damage was
caused in the broach or the crash jibe, but that is irrelevant. What a
disaster - I have sailed Seaduced around the planet, have covered 44,000 miles
and, just over 1,000 miles back to Southampton and we have lost the use of the
boom. Shit, shit, shit!!! I was in a real blue funk' all
of yesterday plus, to add insult to injury, I was on mother watch so had to
prepare lunch and dinner in huge sees
and generally rubbish conditions. Fortunately, we still had one
of the soups that Jane had prepared for us in Mackay so that was lunch dealt
with!
I went to bed early but, of course, couldn't sleep due
to the weather conditions. I was going to phone Jane but it didn't seem
fair to phone her in the mood I was in. Also, I had talked to her twice
during the day and she was fully aware of the situation. I eventually fell
asleep wedged in every which way possible.
I woke up this morning and, apart from being stiff from
an uncomfortable night, felt much better. At the end of the day, it
is only a piece of metal, easily replaced when we are back in England. The
other damage to the sail etc isn't serious. We can still motor and use the
jib and are currently doing a perfectly respectable 8 knots. Most
importantly, however is that nobody was hurt in the
incident.
I have been looking at the weather for the next few
days so we
are currently motoring, also using the jib, towards Lisbon to avoid a
really nasty looking storm due to start coming in to the west of us
tomorrow. Once we are about 100 miles from Lisbon, we will head north up
the coast to Bayona which is a lovely town, as well as having an easily
accessible and well-protected marina with a fuel dock. We will pull in
there for maybe 24 hours then, weather depending, and
the weather for Biscay is currently looking very benign, we will motor directly
from there to the UK, hopefully arriving in Southampton around 26th or 27th
October.
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