Take Off's breaking news
Take Off
Jörgen Wennberg
Wed 4 Oct 2017 20:21
We might as well start this part of blogging about sailing the Indian Ocean by recapitulating all Take Off’s breaking stuff. RUBBER PROTECTION AROUN THE MAST Only 2 days into the crossing the Indian Ocean, Louise hears this ticking noise from down under in the galley by the mast.  By day 7, Jörgen choses to “loosen” the mast.  By doing this bits and pieces from the mast protection dropped on the floor! These were the spare parts that Pär had brought to us from Sweden. They held only for a few weeks.   Jörgen is trying out to make protections from sheets, to sling the sheets and squeeze them in between the mast and the hull.   However Jörgen managed to fit them and squeeze back the more whole parts. We had to stop the boat, take down the main sail and fit the rest of the cushion back.  The day after Jörgen checks out his reparation: seems to hold!  RUDDER STOCK Day 4 we make a regular check on the rudder and discover that a bolt is broken… We will have to check the rudder every day. Day 8 we check again and another bolt is broke! Crossing fingers no more bolts will brake before coming into Mauritius. WATER MAKER Day 8: the water maker is loosing its pressure. Pär is trying to repair it, without success. So we have to restrain on the water. SPINNAKER Day 8 we fly our 2nd spinnaker. At 16h40 Jörgen is steering and suddenly we hear a “PANG”! The spinnaker blew off. We guess it was out of wind and when it filled up with wind again, the boat was probably coming out of a wave and the pressure was too strong for the spinnaker. Too bad...  Alex and Inez enjoying the spinnaker.    The day after we decided to fly the light wind spinnaker as the wind had dropped. That is our 3rd spinnaker as the first one we broke between Darwin and Lombok without having any possibility of repairing it until Mauritius. Crossing fingers this light wind spinnaker will hold! CALLING OUR ON SHORE STAFF As you can see Day 8 most things happened. We decided to call our on shore staff in Sweden, Mats Runström, to send us all different spare parts into Mauritius.  WATER IN THE BILGES Day 8 : we have been looking at the bildges for several days but realised now on Day 8 that we really need to empty them from water. Where does the water come from? The Indian Ocean being so rough, we have constantly waves flushing over board and water comes in through the shrouds, through the hatches, …. Inez is helping Pär to empty the water from the bilges.  BAD GYBES The day before we came into Mauritius, Pär was steering and at around lunch time we got 2 bad unpredicted gybes. The preventer was ripped off. Louise had seen before that the sheet was a bit torn but thought it would hold until Mauritius. So 2 lessons learned: 1. When you see something the slightest broken, torn or not what it should be: do something about it straight away! 2. The sheet for the preventer should not be passed through the pad-eye but through a block. Obviously… During the gybe the main sheet had taken the plotter’s pulpit without (luckily!) breaking anything. However the block to the main sheet cart broke on the port side. We realised also that the system holding the main sheet to the bom broke, so Jörgen repaired that as well as fitting in another preventer.  The torn preventer. There are pretty strong powers out there at sea!  That was all for the breaking news. |