Day 13 – Fixing more Broken Stuff – 11-3-24

I had been thinking this was going to be a boring passage, but I guess not! Last night around 2 am, I woke up to the sound of the boat rushing through the water and heeling over more than normal.  I came up on deck and found Luke on watch.  The wind had picked up to 25 knots and the boat was getting overpowered with our double reefed main.  The extra speed and heeling this caused was making the motion onboard very uncomfortable, especially with the boat slamming into the oncoming 8 foot waves.

So, we decided to put in the third reef in the main sail, which makes it a tiny fraction of its original size.  In order to do a reef at night we needed everyone on deck, so I woke up Mateo and Dean and let them know to come on deck and help out.

With all the cloud cover, it was pitch black out.  I took over the wheel and turned off the autopilot so I could get the boat into the wind so the sail would drop down into it cover. Luke put on his lifejacket and safety harness and went up to the mast to help pull the sail down and secure the sail on its third reef point. Its all easy to do during daylight, but in the dark of the night with howling winds, it makes it orders of magnitude more difficult.

I turned on the engine, as I always do while putting in a reef, just in case I need the power for maneuvering the boat.  As the engine revved to life, I head the alternator belt squealing.  It had not done this before, and I did not want to burn up the belt, so I turned the engine key and shut off the alternator.  Diesels don’t need electricity to run like a gas engine, so the engine kept right on going, but the squeal from the belt had stopped.  I would need to dig into this later…

We all struggled a bit getting the sail down and secured, but eventually got it done.  The boat slowed down due to the smaller sail, and was much more comfortable.

Next I went to have a look at the alternator.  When I opened the engine cover, I could see the main bolt that holds the alternator on had snapped.  This caused the belt to go loose and thus the squealing.  It was now 2:30am, and I was just exhausted from all the repairs we had worked on during the day, and putting in the reef.  I debated on just dealing with it in the morning, but with the engine in its current state, I really could not run it.  The safest thing to do was to fix the engine, so we went to work.

Working in the engine compartment while the boat is bouncing through waves in the pitch dark of night, is not an easy task, and I was delighted to have Luke and Mateo assisting me.  Fortunately, I had a spare bolt of the right size.  It just took some digging to find it.  We got the old bolt off and the new one on and secured.  We did a test run on the engine and everything worked great.  Time to go back to bed!

I woke up in the morning and found the wind still in the high teens and low 20s.  But with the triple reefed main and reefed jib it made the motion of the boat bearable.  Luckily through the day the wind steadily dropped in to the mid-teens, which was actually lower than what was forecasted.  This was a first!

Around noon I went up on the deck of the boat to inspect everything and look for problems, and sure enough, I found another one.  Our Cunningham, which is a line we use to pull down the front of the sail when reefing, had a bent pin and was barely holding itself on.  Luke again assisted me.  We eased up on the Cunningham and removed the bent pin and connector. Luke was able to use some vice grips to get it straight enough to get it back on, which we did.  We secured everything so the pin would not t come loose again.

So why so much breakage lately? The wear and tear on the boat when sailing this many miles, especially over a rough ocean is more abusive that years of normal boat usage.  The jerking, pulling, rolling, bouncing, tugging, etc. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week takes it toll an all the moving parts.  Thus we do regular inspections, and hopefully find problems before they break, and get them fixed.  This is just life as it happens on a boat sailing across the ocean.

We only managed 118 miles today due to slowing the boat done for comfort, and the 3 hours we had to heave to for repairs.  Hopefully tomorrow we will do better.

Maybe tomorrow will be boring??