A Comedy of Errors?

Serendipity
David Caukill
Sat 10 Mar 2012 17:55

Saturday 10h March:  The South Pacific Ocean 05 32.7S 107 02.7W     

Today’s Blog by David

 

Errr …got something to say….Hmmm, what was it now? Oh yes, I remember……… HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIMONE!!!!!!!

 

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Good morning everyone. I’d like you to know that my shorts are getting wet as I sit at the chart table and there is still a  flying fish on the cabin sole in the main saloon.  The forward hatch is  open again and the boat is slow drying out!

 

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We have been having a glorious time.  The wind has been pretty steady and is now about 18-20 knots from the south east.  In order to go as fast as we can we started with the Asymmetric cruising chute (the Frog) and as the wind built we went faster and faster.  Richard, a racing sailor, was in his element sheeting in and out on each gust and we were going along very nicely at between 9 -10 knots. Sadly the sea was building too making it harder and harder to keep the sail full as the boat swayed from side to side but we were making a good fist of it – AND we were going in the right direction.

 

Winding me up

Now, electric winches are unforgiving things.  They would be excellent in the frontline of battle because they are very strong and they have no intelligence; they do exactly as you tell them. So if you press the button (aka order them to wind the sail in) that is exactly what they do without any consideration of whether that is what you really should be doing – no Sirree – that is above their pay grade.  It is the person  giving the orders (aka pressing the button) who needs consider whether pulling it in is a good idea – and I am sure you can understand that the required multitasking is truly quite difficult when you are up to your ears reading PG Wodehouse on your  Kindle. And so it came to pass that we trashed our starboard hand electric winch; a winding it in against the tail caught in a riding turn. Ho hum.

 

But, no matter we do have a manual winch on the starboard side so we transferred the sheet to that and continued with the Frog until the sea state made it untenable when we deployed the double headsail rig on Wednesday afternoon.

 

At least we made the change in time. Alas, we hear that the blue sail below is now a sail of very many parts, having blown out on Wednesday night:

 

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We have heard of two other spinnakers damaged beyond on-board repair.

 

Frying what we catch

We landed a couple of smallish dorado on Wednesday. On Thursday we added a 2.5kilo yellow jack tuna – which provided more than enough tuna steaks for our dinner and yesterday’s luncheon.  This was a new lure that we bought in Santa Cruz and it wasn’t finished.  Just before dinner we landed a dorado of about 1.8 kilos; on its own, it was  not quite enough for a dinner for four  but is now added to the ships stores, filleted and frozen.

 

Wednesday’s fishing coup de grace was  to hook another sail fish. Knowledgeable anglers (or at least,  one man in particular who claims knowledge) will tell you that sailfish are discerning things. They chew things over  in their mouths then spit it out if they don’t like it. Indeed,  you may recall that that  was indeed our experience when we hooked  our first sail fish. This second one was smaller than the first and David, at least, had designs on landing it.

 

In summary,  the line parted and the sailfish lives to fight another day, I am guessing still trailing a decorative lure and a length of line behind him/her! 

 

Number nineteen buses

There is an English _expression_ which laments the fact buses never appear at regular intervals.  Mathematicians have spent years pondering this phenomenon using amongst other things “queuing theory”’. This is the same mathematics they use to explain why it is that when you are driving to along on a busy main road (freeway) and the people in  front slow down, everyone behind also slows down but more so - quite often the traffic behind has to come to a complete stop – one way or another. 

 

And so it is with No. 19 buses, you can wait for ages then three come at once.  Readers will remember that the mast was taken out in Antigua and  to be frank it has never sat “right” since.  On Thursday night we noticed that the mast was a bit wobbly where it passes through the deck.  It didn’t seem a crises though – it is well stayed and supported by all the “shrouds” (the wires that hold it up) but the chocking had come adrift at the deck head (curiously the technical name for the part of the deck head which has been strengthened to take the mast is “the partners”). The mast was wobbling around a bit in the partners. We sent a consultative email to Oyster for advice.

 

Friday morning – at about 02.00  when David came on watch the batteries (readers will recall that these had been replaced in Panama) were in need of charging. However, the generator failed when it was started.  This was not a real concern because it had  happened before – sailing down wind,  an airlock can form in the raw water inlet such that the generator runs dry on start up until it has sucked a head of water to the impeller.  Thus,  the impeller runs dry for a few seconds each time it is started and eventually fails.

 

When Bob was fool enough to show himself while going to the loo at 05.00 (read that as innocently as you can, please) we commenced the replacement of the impeller.  It’s a fiddly job, not least because Bob had to extract all the pieces that had broken off the impeller from the heat exchanger, but it is relatively simple and was done in about 90 minutes.

 

Time for a pot of tea and to read the incoming emails from friends,  family and one from Oyster.   I can’t say it was good news:

Whilst ……rig … should be OK … light to moderate conditions  -----  not ideal* …..left in its current state  …. In anything more than moderate weather …..  treat it as urgent ……  !

 

* Note: This is  Litotes at its best!  English is a tough language to understand, if you are not native.

 

There was nothing for it but to bolster the mast at the partners. We were given detailed (and daunting) instructions;

 

Undertaking this at sea is not ideal (more litotes) but this is what you should seek to accomplish:

 

The mast is first winched aft by running a line from port primary winch, up side deck via sheet tracks as necessary, around front of mast, down stbd side deck & back to stbd primary (avoiding chafe on GRP as far as possible). With mast winched aft, position the fwd chocks centrally and with chocks protruding above & below deck collar.  Release line, allowing mast to return against chocks.

 

Now mast has to be pulled fwd.  Rig a 4:1 purchase between mast and stem head fitting and winch the mast fwd against the rubber chocks as hard as you dare, without breaking anything - tighter the better. Fill the gap between aft face of mast and collar with more chocks - as tightly as possible. Carefully release the line, letting mast return aft, against aft chocks.

 

I can’t say we  were hopeful of success. The wind was about 20kts at the time and there was quite sea running but the fact of the matter is that, much to all of  our surprise after about 2 hours the mast partners looked thus – wooden wedges outside a rubber chock:

 

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How long it stays like that is another thing altogether………

 

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. We had a good days sail; read some more books, did a cross word and relaxed.

The same cannot be said of the night though – the No. 19 Buses were not yet done with us…... 

 

We are not alone in our mishaps. The evening roll call among the fleet is getting hard to hear clearly. But we are persevering with it.  Last night we were troubled to hear that one of the fleet has discovered a crack around the support to their rudder post which  flexes and opens to 1.5mm when the rudder is under load.   This must be disturbing for them because there is a danger they will lose their rudder.   Another boat has lost many of its instruments (speed, wind and depth).

 

Thus chastened we battened down the hatches and commenced the night watch system. At about the 23.00 watch change we took a quite unusual,  unusually large,  and certainly unexpected wave over the side deck.  This served to demonstrate that not all our hatches were battened down – in particular, the starboard side coach roof hatch – which has been open pretty much since we left St Luciia – was still open.

 

It is amazing how far a little splash of water can go; essentially it washed out the saloon and explains why – as I write - my trousers are now soaking up water from the chart table seat cushion, fully three metres from the window. 

 

So the third No.19 Bus having stopped by we were entitled to think that we were done with the unexpected. However, l at 04.30 a halyard parted bringing the whole fore rig crashing onto the deck. A further 90 minutes to clear that up and we are now running under main and staysail – much chastened and tail between our legs so to speak.

 

Now, the sun has risen and a new day had dawned ….i wonder what happiness it will bring?