Day 81 - Leg 5 Day 7 at Sea 'Sailing, Disaster and Repairs'

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sun 13 Sep 2015 14:48
Friday we had a cracking days sailing.  The wind was blowing 25 knots and gusting 30 - 35, but we were downwind sailing at 8+ knots so the apparent wind was quite manageable.  Apparent wind is a combination of boat speed and wind speed so, if you are sailing directly downwind at 8 knots, and the wind is blowing from behind at 30 knots, this reduces your apparent wind to 22 knots ie the speed that the wind hits the boat.  If you are sailing directly into the wind at 8 knots, and the wind is blowing at 30 knots, the apparent wind would be 38 knots.  Same wind speed, same boat speed but 16 knots difference in the wind effect on the boat.  If the wind is blowing at an angle to the boat, it will be a variation on the theme.  This is why we were comfortable sailing downwind at 25 - 35 knots.
 
The winds carried on all day, the only problem was the pretty significant wave height in the 8 - 12 metre range, which made the boat pretty rocky and rolly.  However, at last we we had had the engine off and were making good progress.  Things were starting to look good.
 
The following morning, I was woken at 03.00 by Sam asking me to come on deck.  What a mess.  The wind had been dying and Paul had wanted to switch headsails from the smaller jib to the larger genoa.  He had put the sail out, but needed to adjust the car (which affects the setting of the genoa).  To cut a long story short, and avoid embarrassing anybody, by the time I arrived on deck, we had an 80% tear in the genoa, the radar unit had been ripped off the mast by the sail and hurled overboard and the loud hailer was dangling from a wire half way up the mast.  There was nothing that we could do until daylight, so back on with the engine and no radar.
 
The loss of the radar isn't as serious as it could have been in other locations.  There are no small boats where we are, and anything over 300 tonnes has to carry AIS.  What this does is send signals out about the vessel, and also receive signals back from other vessels.  We have an AIS transponder and receiver, so we send out a signal ourselves and receive signals from other vessels which then show up as a 'target' on our chartplotter.  This gives a variety of information, including name, call sign, size, direction and, most importantly, the CPA (closest point of approach) to us and what time is the CPA. 
 
At 08.00, we were all on deck to assess the damage and see what we needed to do.  The wind had died and the waves reduced in size, so it was a good day to crack on with the various jobs needing to be done.  The two most critical tasks were to go up the mast to remove what was left of the radar bracket and the loud hailer and make sure that any sharp edges were removed or covered, and then repair the sail. 
 
So, Paul volunteered to go up the mast to do the various tasks required.  An hour later, after a pretty unpleasant and bruising time, everything was tidied up and we could get on with the other tasks.
 
When we are offshore, we take the dinghy off the davits and put it on the foredeck, so the next job was to unlash the dinghy and launch it, no easy feat in a still rolly sea.  This would clear the foredeck and give us a good area to work on the sail.  We then dropped the genoa and spent a couple of hours repairing the sail.  While Paul was finishing this off. Ant, Sam and I set about on the other tasks.  By the end of the day, the sail was, hopefully, in a fit state to be rehoisted, so we set about that, only to find that there was a problem with the bolt rope, the bit at the front of the sail that attaches it to the forestay, so down it came again.  An hour later, after a very temporary fix, we gingerly hoisted it again and checked it over.  It wasn't pretty, but the repairs looked to be holding, and we hadn't missed any other damage. 
 
Rather than test the sail this the evening, there was very little wind and it was getting dark so we made the decision to motor overnight and check it out in the morning when we would be able to keep a close eye on the repairs for the first couple of hours.
 
The following morning, there was still no wind so, still under engine, we carried on with the remaining jobs, including 3 lots of washing.  By the end of the day we looked like a Chinese laundry with washing lines all over the aft deck
 
The forecast is showing that the wind should pick up tomorrow, but at the moment there is nothing so we are going to continue motoring overnight.  Unless the winds arrive soon, we will have to call into St Helena or Ascension to pick up some fuel.