Delay
Truantofsark
Tue 1 Feb 2011 11:12
We fuelled up and went out and were quickly into very steep seas and 30
knots of wind. We passed the Woodvale rowers in Britannia 3 and they kept
disappearing and reappearing in the big seas. Then disaster struck and one
of the two Lewmar power packs stopped working, and we lost the hydraulics to
the main sail outhaul and the foresail furler. In effect that meant that we
could not pull in the main sail or reef the foresail properly. Not a happy
state of affairs for an ocean crossing. When it became clear that this was
not a temporary over-heat, the decision to return to Mogan was quickly made
and we were hard on the wind on the return. We anchored off the port, to
release the outhaul manually & got all the sails away. Then we went back in.
Our Chief Engineer, Bart, quickly diagnosed the problem as a burn out on the
negative side of the power pack motor. We decided to sleep on it and then
took the motor off, as you can see. With a bit of UK internet support, we
managed to contact the Lewmar agent last night and today the motor is on its
way to Las Palmas for further testing. It's not clear why the burn out
happened, possibly a bit of corrosion or something loose, although we're not
really convinced about that. We have also been speaking to Lewmar UK re
parts. More on the solution later, but meantime the crew is trying to keep
its spirits up and planning to bolster morale with a sojourn ashore.
