Sunday Update

Spindrift
David Hersey
Sun 28 Oct 2007 10:36
OCT 25
We came out of the water Friday morning. We arrived at the Travel lift
dock at 8:30 and about three hours later were high and dry. The travel
lift was a very tight fit.
A very strange fish hung on the the rudder for a couple of minutes as the
boat was being lifted. When they had parked us and the travel lift was
removed the top of it cleared the Sat Dome by about 2mm. Very Close.
Just as we were leaving our mooring the fridge men reappeared with the
pump but we waved goodbye. They came to the boat later in the yard and
put it all back. It turns out there wasn't really a problem. The pump is
a 24volt pump and there is a regulator which runs it at 5 volts which is
enough of a trickle to cool the compressor. There is a little button
hidden away which gives a momentary 9 volts which is what you need to get
it going again if you've had an air lock. Air locks are a special feature
of the Moody Design. We get them all the time. We are now going to
remote this secret switch to a more accessible position.

The Spinnaker has been repaired (the boss came back) but the sail maker
wants to go for a trial with us to be certain all the bits of string are
in the right place. Very Encouraging.
The replacement bow rollers (for the anchor chain) sent by Moodys are
wrong and the central hole will have to be enlarged. The replacement
Slider part for the spinnaker track fitting came and has been installed.
We will now get the original one straightened out properly as a spare.
Engine warning lights replaced as original ones had been fried in the sun.


All the batteries etc under my bunk have been removed. I will have to
move out and seal all the cupboards when work starts in earnest.

OCT 26
The man from Princess arrived last night and came to the boat first thing
this morning.
His conclusion is they we have a failure which is probably due to an
inadequate method of securing the Skeg (the bit the rudder is hinged from)
to the hull in the first place. He has drilled a number of holes to
determine the extent of water penetration in the balsa core. Fortunately
it appears to be contained to a relatively small area.

On the way here we had several days sailing down wind at speed with big
following seas that would sometimes slue the stern from side to side
putting enormous pressure on the rudder and the skeg. We can only guess
that this caused the damage. . The last couple of days of sailing we had
noticed a sort of hum, a vibration in the stern and this was undoubtedly
due rudder oscillation. It would have gotten worse and I suppose we
could have lost the joint completely mid ocean which of course would have
been a total disaster.




Princess appear to accept full responsibility for putting this right and
subject to confirmation Monday are going to send two men out early next
week . It's not just a matter of a repair they have to beef it up to
insure it doesn't happen again. They are going to remove the fibre glass
skin around the joint of the skeg to the hull from the outside and when
they've replaced it they will do the same from the inside and somehow in
the process strengthen everything. This is going to put us a good two
weeks behind schedule and I will have to think how to make up the time as
we can't really change the Antarctic dates and we were already on a
tighter schedule than I would have liked. Ho hum.





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