Long Beach to Cost Rica

Sailing with Dummies (California to Texas, Day 13)

Sunday, June 21, 2009

by Mike

Today I got up at 4:00am. I got semi-functional at 4:10. Bob went to bed at 4:15. It was rough with a 20 knot headwind and big waves coming right at us. And it was raining, of course. It was too rough to do much of anything comfortably, so I plugged in a movie. Then I sat, reclining on two pillows letting them absorb some of the banging and slamming.

The movie, some football movie with James Caan, wasn’t great, but wasn’t bad. About an hour into it I heard a huge “BOOM” behind me (toward the front of the boat) that sounded like some sort of major impact. Maybe like a car wreck really close. But I felt nothing. It was followed by a secondary noise (toward the back of the boat) which reminded me of glass breaking. Or something breaking.

Immediately I went outside to see what I could see. Well, immediately after pausing the movie, that is … it was at a good part. I didn’t see anything except rain in the pitch black. Then I grabbed an overboard beacon and a headlamp and put on a nighttime harness. I clipped into the safety webbing and headed forward. When I got to the front, I saw he front stay flying around loose and it had already caused some damage. I slowed the engines and went back inside and told Bob that he might want to start getting awake, we had some things to do (“happy father’s day, now get outa bed you lazy muttonhead!”).

The front stay is a 60-foot-long guy-wire that goes from the top of the mast to the tip of the bowsprit, (the pointy thing out front). It has a large sail (gennaker) furled around it. It holds the mast forward and we fly the gennaker from it in good sailing conditions. At the bottom of the stay is a drum that spools a rope used for furling and unfurling.

The stay had wrapped around the right spreader, about 30 feet up, and the bottom was held in a general area of the right front by the furling rope and a cable attached to the bottom right hull of the boat. Still attached to it were the eight-foot bowsprit and the 20-foot cable, along with substantial hardware and connections. It was heavy and swinging around wildly as the boat crashed into the waves.

I turned the boat sideways to the wind to settle the motion of the boat some and to use the wind to help keep the swinging mass away from the boat and doing more damage. Then I went forward for a better inspection of the situation, clipping and unclipping my harness along the way. It was windy, dark, and still raining. The gennaker had unfurled about 15 feet and was catching a lot of wind. It looked to be slowly unfurling more, not a good thing.

I took the left spinnaker tack (rope) from the front left of the boat and tied the end of it to the furling cage. Winching it in, it pulled the bottom of the mess back towards the middle of the boat over the trampoline where we could work on it.

By then Bob was up and silently observing the mess. We tied the bottom of the stay off with four different ropes and then removed the extra cabling and the bowsprit. This got rid of a lot of weight and thereby reduced the inertia of the swinging stay immensely. Then we turned the boat downwind to help get the stay off the spreader above. This accomplished, we tightening and loosening the four ropes, along with the furling rope, and managed to refurl the sail around the stay. That was a big help.

From there we ran ropes through the front cleats and back to winches. We were able to pull these ropes tight which pulled the end of the stay somewhat tight. Two hours after the “BOOM” we had things in good enough shape to limp on to the next town.

Some fine detective work later revealed that a shackle connecting a cable to front bottom part of the left hull had broken or come loose. This let the bowsprit be ripped upwards and to the right, which tore the bowsprit off where it was welded to a crossbeam. The stay, bowsprit, and cables tore off the top of the radome, killing our radar. It also tore off a radar reflector, broke a lifeline, and stetched and sprung two more lifelines. The gennaker furler may have some damage; we won’t be able to check it until we get the other things fixed.

While we’re at Huatulco, we’ll try to get the bowsprit mount welded and we’ll also try to fix a few other things, get some laundry done, and fill up with diesel. With luck, maybe we can be back sailing late tomorrow.