At 5 AM I was woken by the sound of a sail flapping. I figured the there had been a wind change and as I prepared to go topside I wondered why boat had not made the necessary adjustment to stop the luffing. The moon must have still been up on the western horizon because there was sufficient light coming through the overcast sky for reasonable vision. I could see the staysail hanging along the side of the boat being pushed toward the stern by the wind. I clipped on my harness and worked my way to the starboard shrouds and had a close look. The sail itself was OK. The halyard was still suspending the sail and the sheets were still tied to the clew, but the tack was flying free. The shackle through the clew was OK, the wire strop attached to it was OK, and so was the shackle at the bottom of the strop. The deck fitting had parted.
Fortunately for me the conditions were benign. There was just enough wind to allow the boat to keep sailing itself at 1.2 kt with the double reefed mainsail, the sea was relatively calm, and there was no drizzle. I unhanked the sail then tied the bottom of the foretay to the forward anchoring bollard. The sail was relatively dry, with just a sheen of dampness on it, so I put it into the cabin through the hatch. Below I did a surprisingly good job of flaking (folding) the sail across the main table then put it in its bag and stowed it forward. I then inspected the damage.
Below the foredeck there is a wire strop with a turnbuckle that connects a padeye on the forward bulkhead to a padeye on the underside of the foredeck. Its job is to prevent the deck from being lifted by the forestay when it under load. From the top of the deck a U-bolt had passed through the deck and the padeye below and been secured with two nuts. It appeared that the U-bolt had sheared off. The padeye was loose, the nuts and threads of the U-bolts were still in place, but above there were two holes where I could feel the ends of the U-bolt with a screwdriver. My first concern was to avoid water sweeping the deck and finding its way inside, so I decided to not roll out the headsail and allow the boat to dawdle until I came up with a solution. The minimalist plan would be to fill in the holes with epoxy and forget about using the staysail. The desired plan was to find something that I could pass through the padeye to which I could attach the forestay. After breakfast I would systematically go through all of my stores to see what I could come up with. It was unlikely that I'd be able to find another U bolt the exact same size, but you never know.
At 6 AM I searched my stores on the quarter berth bunks. I found a bulldog clamp that might do the trick but I knew that I had more U bolts and bulldog clamps on the boat, so I consulted the spreadsheet of Pachuca's equipment stores and learned that they were in the storage area below the starboard bunk. Getting into that area and putting everything back took over an hour of hard work, made more difficult by the fact that the passage way to that quarter berth was filled with water bottles. But it was worth the effort because I struck pay dirt. To my surprise, relief, and delight I found two U-bolts that would fit perfectly in the holes through the deck and looked long enough to do the job. They were used clamps so I must have removed them from somewhere and kept them as spares.
From there everything went as I hoped it would. I punched through the studs remaining in the deck and confirmed that they had sheared clean through. The metal was bright at the break, with no sign of corrosion. I cleaned the area with methylated spirits, squeezed silicone sealant out of a handy tube that I had, then hammered down the U clamp with the plate on the topside of the deck. Down below I had to fiddle for quite a while with the hold-down strop but eventually it was all put together with the nuts securing the U bolt passing from above very tight. I also left the hold-down strop a bit tighter than before. On deck I took my time fitting the inner forestay to the new deck fitting and tensioned the stay a little tighter than it had been before. I used new cotter pins on the turnbuckle and moused the shackles. Then it was time to bend the staysail. At 11.30 AM the staysail was up and we were sailing normally again as though there had never been a problem.
The key, of course, was having that spare U bolt. I wondered how long this one would last but on the other had the broken one may have been original for all I knew. In any event, I had a second U bolt at the ready. Given that the failure had to happen I was very fortunate with the circumstances. It happened in a moderate breeze on a calm sea, which allowed me to work in relative safety and comfort while the boat tended to itself. Things would have been very messy and dangerous had it happened during a gale.
It was time to start serious sailing again. I had been too busy to notice that the day had developed into a beautiful one for sailing. The overcast had been replaced by a clear blue sky, the sea was calm and blue, and the breeze was a moderate 12 knots. I shook out the second reef then rolled out 1/3 of the headsail which put us at 4.8 knots of speed to the SE against a NE wind. I was living the lyrics "Banking off the northeast wind, sailing on summer breeze, skipping over the ocean like a storm."
At noon we were at 30S52, 122W47, giving uss a n-n distance of 70 miles to the SE. We had moved .87 degrees to the south. I figured that I had lost 15-20 miles from the 6.5 hours of "down time" to the forestay problem.
I took advantage of the sunshine to do some clothes washing. I had promised my self that if I went to the trouble of eking out that 10 liters of water from a pretty feeble drizzle a week ago I'd use it for washing. It was a modest load: 4 sets of under clothes, the dish towel, and the track suit top and bottom that had become contaminated by salt water. Later, during the 1 hour engine run I used the heater to completely dry two garments and no doubt partially dry other damp items that I had hanging around the cabin. Afterwards I treated myself to a salt water bath in the cockpit followed by a complete fresh water rinse.
I planned an cheese omelet for dinner using my "bad egg" protocol: crack the egg into a separate container to make sure that it is OK before putting it in the frying pan. I had already encountered one bad egg.
At 4.45 PM (2245 GMT) I had a go at getting weather fax out of Charleville of 48 hour forecast sea level pressure of the entire polar region (360 degrees) extending to latitude 20S. I didn't expect to get a readable fax because the sun was still up, but in fact I got a very legible fax and I liked liked what I saw. I am on the western side of that great big high that sits off the coast of the lower part of South America. The winds clock around to the N and NW as one progresses south at this longitude, then at about 35S it begins interacting with a low much farther south, creating a broad "squash zone" with good west winds. To me it looked like the classical weather pattern for this part of the world as described in the books. This fax will now be one of my weather forecast resources.
At 6 PM we were still sailing nicely to a 12 knot breeze that had backed a little. I adjusted Jeff to take us on a broad reach on a heading of SE. We were making 4.5 knots and the boat was moving very easily through the water. I was hoping for a quiet and uneventful night.
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3 comments:
Seems like you are getting closer to The Horn!
Enjoying your excellent blog....find it gives a great description of a ocean passage , (very educational)hope one day to also do several passsages, have you considered a book?
regards
Peter
I've been suggesting Robert write a book for years!
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