"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 8 Update!

Sunday is a relaxing day. A day of rest for many. In the Fall, Sunday is a
day that I look forward to relaxing and watching some NFL games in the
afternoon.

The sailing continued nicely today. The seas were getting rough and the wind
was staying strong. But the Minnow handles waves very nicely. We were
staying tight on the wind (sailing as much into the wind as possible). We
reefed the main sail about 5:00am and were using the solent up front.

In the reefing process we discovered that the main halyard (the rope that
raises the main sail) had chafed to the point that the rope cover was worn
all the way through. This was not a good thing. The sailing ropes we use
have a cover made out of normal nylon-like material. The center core is
where the strength is and it is made out of something like Kevlar. The
center part was unmarred (but wouldn't stay that way without fixing the
chafing problem.

We also found that the hydraulic winches quit working. This meant a lot of
hand winching. This is not desirable for five middle-aged men. So we
hand-winched. And we got the main halyard in a position we considered safe
from chafing and continued on.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon the waves got bigger. Generally
our consensus was that they were 10-12 feet most of the day, but for a few
hours they were up to 15 feet. The Minnow behaved remarkably well in the
rough water. But it was still rough. Waves were crashing into the boat and
the entire boat was constantly covered in spray. It was fun!

We noticed the autopilot was keeping the rudders turned real hard one
direction. We adjusted sails and other things. Nothing helped. The left
rudder was even coming out of the water quite a bit. Early in the afternoon
the autopilot quit. This required someone (David volunteered) to go out into
the rough seas and drive by hand (he got wet and stayed wet). Our first
thought was that the autopilot was overworked and broke.

By rerouting some communication wires we temporarily fixed the autopilot. It
was just a bad connection somewhere we think. David went below to take a
shower (his fourth of the day) in the front right part of the boat. When in
the shower he looked out the window and noticed the water was way too high
on the boat.

He came out and went forward to check the forward locker (beneath the hatch
where we put Whomper the day before). He came back and, using colorful
language, informed us that the boat was sinking and instructed everyone to
put on a harness, grab some buckets, and go forward.

This was about two hours before sunset, and luckily the waves were a lot
smaller (6-8 feet?) What generally ensued, and in no particular order, was
(1) ) we turned downwind and pulled in the solent (2) we hooked up two
garden hoses to two water pumps and began pumping the water out (3) we
bucketed water out. (4) we yelled a lot (5) we began trying to pin the blame
on Bob (6) we laid down in front of the hatch to reduce the amount of water
from coming over the bow into the hatch. (7) we turned on the generator and
hot water heaters so we could have hot showers later (8) we tried to siphon
the water out of the hold (yes it was a couple of feet over the sea level)
(9) we yelled more (10) we took items out of the hold and put them into the
cockpit.

For about the first 30 minutes we made little progress. We would get some
water out, and some would wash back in. This locker is huge. There was a LOT
of stuff in the locker. About 8 suitcases, a spare watermaker, a spare
electric wind generator, lots of toilet paper, lots of paper towels, Whomper
(Whomper is really, really big), our dinghy, lots of sail bags, large Catana
flags, blankets and comforters, and lots of other miscellaneous things.

We estimated that we captured about 660-800 gallons of seawater. That's
about 3 tons. With two pumps pumping, we gave up on siphoning and finally
got most of the bigger items out of the locker. Then we concentrated on
bucketing. We bucketed in shifts (two people at a time) until it was too
dark to continue safely. We had removed probably 80% of the water and
probably 80% of the stuff.

We closed the hatch, set the sails and turned back on course into the wind.
We proceeded to lash down all the mess in the cockpit. The rudder issue
disappeared after we removed most of the 3 tons of water from the right
front corner of the boat. Imagine that, haha.

After things were under temporary control we licked our wounds and
considered the damage. We had gone 11.9 miles backwards in about 2 hours. IT
would take almost 2 hours to get back to where we were. Four hours lost .
not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Cathy called that night and told us that we had gone from 212th place to
34th place. Wow. That seemed impossible.

Oh well, we were too tired to celebrate much. Sunday is a relaxing day?

Fishing report:

Blast it! No bites.

Arts and Entertainment:

There was nothing artistic about the day, save the interesting red bruise
pattern on Bob's back. For entertainment, see above.