So this was going to be another day of no progress. The low pressure area to our north that had caused these adverse wind conditions had not moved but rather almost dissipated in situ, now having a pressure of l009 hPa. The low seemed to have been formed, lived, and died wedged in the band of high's stretching across lat 40S. I had learned a hard lesson on the weather patterns in this part of the world.
But the sea was calm and the sky clear enough to promise a bright and sunny day. Over coffee I decided to make the best of the calm conditions. I opened both hatches for the first time in weeks in order to air and dry out the boat. During the day I would put out damp items for drying in the sun. (Surprisingly, there is no visible mold anywhere inside the cabin.) I would have loved to do some clothes washing but couldn't spare the water. Much as I wanted to continue with the sewing, I thought that I could make better use of the conditions.
The first thing that I would do would be to clear the passage area between the quarter berths of the empty water containers. This would give me access to the space under the cockpit to see if there may happen to be a loose wire to the autopilot's linear drive. It was a long shot but a comment in some material that Stephen had sent me on the problem mentioned a lose connection in that area. If I got lucky then I was fairly sure that the problem of the wind data not displaying on the chart plotter would also be resolved.
Next would be the wind data problem. The previous evening I had loosened the instrument panel above the companionway and found that both the wind and depth instruments were working fine and the sturdy cable that daisy chained them to the Seatalk network were firmly in place. This day I would track the Seatalk link through the closet behind the nav station. I was fairly sure that the culprit was the autopilot computer because I recalled how it had knocked out the entire Seatalk network for a while. If it came to that I would try to bypass the autopilot altogether, but I had to be careful because the chart plotter's GPS data passed through the autopilot computer.
After that I would explore an idea I had about reinstating an inner forestay to support the mast.
Sometime in the afternoon I would do a fuel transfer. As I had explained before, the fuel is safer in the main tanks than on the deck, and there are fewer moisture problems with full fuel tanks. And then there was the next loaf of bread to be baked. If there was time I would do some more sewing.
I would try to get an early night in order to be prepared for downwind sailing using the whisker pole at around midnight.
I performed the first task in the plan and GOT THE AUTOPILOT WORKING. YIPPPPPPEEEEEE! I went into the below cockpit section and had a look and pull at the connections and nothing seemed amiss. I removed the cover of the connection block for the power and ground of the linear drive then decided to first shut down the chart plotter and throw the breakers of it and the autopilot. That's when I got the first scent of success. The chart plotter was down to its last seconds of countdown before shutdown and I caught a glimpse of wind data being displayed in the corner of the screen. I went back below and reseated the power and earth wires then reseated a pair of thin wires in another connection block. I powered up the chart plotter and saw the rede line of the boat's heading being displayed for the first time in weeks. That meant that the chart plotter was getting data from the flux gate compass, which passed through the autopilot computer. I went to the binnacle and saw that the autopilot was in "standby" mode, not error mode. I engaged it and could see the wheel being moved in small steps by the linear drive. At this point everything was back to normal: the autopilot was working, the chart plotter could see the boat heading, and the wind data was being displayed. I realized afterwards that those two small wires that I had reseated went back to the autopilot display/control at the binnacle, and I suspect that these connections were the culprit.
This came out of one comment in lots of information that Stephen, Brenda's son, had sent to me from research into my problem that he had done on the internet. My thanks go to Stephen and I hope that he gets a buzz from knowing the significant help he's given to this lone sailor in one of the most remote parts of the ocean.
I the had a look at the inner forestay problem. Often it takes a while for memories to bubble up to the surfacer of my mindf. I remembered on two occasions sailors describing how they did emergency rigging repairs using spare wire and bulldog clamps. In the hold I had two D1 stays which were in good condition but changed on the advice of the rigger in Hawaii. The were completely intact, including bottle screws for adjusting the tightness. The damaged forestay was still hanging from the tang above the first crosstree. As far as I knew, the upper end of the stay was in good condition because the loadings on it had been much less harsh than on the lower end. So the plan was to see if I could cut off the lower, damaged part of the stay, cut a section of the lower end of one of the spare D1 stays, and marry them up using bulldog clamps.
The first task was to find the bulldog clamps. I have to credit myself with the prescience of purchasing a good supply of bulldog clamps in La Paz, and I found 10 of them in my stores in two different sizes. I'd have to do some wire cutting so next I found the new hacksaw blades which I had also purchased in La Paz and put one on the hacksaw. Then I dug out the spare D1's from storage and at this point I had the main ingredients for doing the job. I went to the mast to free the damaged stay, mark it for cutting, and measuring the resultant gap between the cut and the deck fitting. I had to be careful because the stay was bristling with broken wires and one false move and it could spring or swing and slice my face open like a sharp knife. I wore gloves and safety glasses. I marked the stay for cutting, established that the gap to the deck fitting was 40". I figured that a 2' overlap of the wires would be sufficient which meant that I would mark the D1 for cutting off the bottom 64". I put bulldog clamps at the point of the cuts. This provided a guide for the hacksaw, a better place for me to hold the wire during the cut, and prevented the cut wires from splaying out. I made the cuts, wound back the bottle screw as much as I dared, then joined the wires to yield a total length just long enough to reach the deck fitting. I used 5 bulldog clamps over the 2' span of the join. I placed the outer ones as close to the ends of the cut off wires as possible in order to prevent the headsail from being damaged as it swept across the stay during tacks. For good measure I put another clamp adjacent to each end one, just outside the overlap, to eliminate any possibility of the sail coming into contact with the end of the cut wires. I then tightened the bulldog clamps several times to make sure that they were very tight. I connected the stay to the deck fitting using the same shackle that I had used before, tightened the bottle screw until the tension on the mast was as I wanted it, and I could see that I still had about 1.5 inches of adjustment left in the bottle screw. Then I checked the bulldog clamps yet again for tightness. Finally I moused the lower shackle and that was it. I was pretty sure that the composite stay would successfully play its role of giving support to the mast. I gave a prayer of thanks for the success of the morning's endeavors then put everything away and cleaned the cabin. At 1 PM I was eating lunch and thinking of a nap.
While I was eating lunch I thought of how this enforced time out that the winds had bestowed on me had led me to address three of the major equipment problems of the boat: the autopilot, the inner forestay, and the damaged headsail which I had started to sew. You never know, maybe it was all meant to be.
At noon our position was 50S33, 096Wl2, giving us a n-n distance of 18 miles in the direction 063T.
At 2 PM the nap had to be postponed because I noticed a weak but steady wind from the WSW. With the sea so calm I figured that we could carry sail with the 7 or 8 knot breeze. I put up the trysail, rolled out some headsail, and soon we were making 2 knots on course 135T. This was the first time we had sailed toward the SE since before the gale.
I rose from the cot at 5 PM and made a cup of tea in preparation for the whisker pole operation. I started off by lubricating the latch at one end and piston at the other with WD40. I then raised the mast ring 6 inches. I then took up Bob Carroll's suggestion and tied a long cord to the release mechanism of the latch, which would be at the sheet end of the pole. The following wind was light so I managed to set up the pole without dramas. We were still running too far off the wind and I realized that I would need to drop the trysail in order to be able to run more downwind. But first I needed to run the engine because I had been too busy in the morning to do it. Jeff had trouble steering the boat with the light following wind and the propeller boosting us along so I engaged Vistar the autopilot then went down below. 30 minutes later I noticed that we were off course and sure enough Vistar had disengaged without any alarm that I had heard. (A tiny beep can be heard at the autopilot control at the binnacle, but you've got to be there to hear it.) Like any old friend Vistar still had his faults but I was nevertheless happy to have him back as crew rather than passenger.
The engine run would finish after 7 PM, it had been a productive but hard day and I felt a bit washed out, so I decided to postpone the refueling operation to the following day. The bread making would wait too. Fortunately I had just enough bread remaining for breakfast.
After the engine run I dropped the trysail and packed it away.
I solved the mystery of why we were headed more east than our actual COG, as though a current was pushing us to the west rather than the east. The chart plotter was set up with a compass variation of 12W. In this part of the ocean the variation is a whopping 28E. I made the change and the the display made sense. We were being pushed about 15 degrees to the east by the current. I did not roll out any headsail after dropping the trysail to minimize the stress on the sail in the event of an unintended gybe. Besides, the wind was supposed to pick up during the night. It took a bit of effort but finally I set Jeff up to steer us close enough to the wind so that we went into the night on a course of 110T, directly for the Horn, at 3.5 knots.
This day had changed my prospects beyond all expectations.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
1 comment:
I agree that Stephen is a great helper.
Post a Comment