Ooopppsss I did it again!!
Another accidental gybe. 100% my fault this time. And I broke stuff as well. UUUGGGGHHHH. I hate admitting it and writing this. But it happened.
We were getting ready to put the spinnaker up and had rolled up our jib so we only had a reefed mainsail up. David was up on the deck prepping the spinnaker, and I decided it would be a good time to do some calibration on our autopilot. The autopilot was not steering quite right, and I needed to make an adjustment. In order to do the adjustment I had to move the rudder all the way to the right, then all the way to the left, while tapping on the chart plotter screen when each maneuver was done. After turning all the way right, I was looking at the chart plotter screen, got distracted, then WHAM, gybe!
See photo with highlighted parts.
- Blue circle is the main sheet block. The green line running through it is the main sheet.
- Yellow is the traveler car
- Green line is the traveler track which is underneath everything.
- Purple is the traveler control line
- Red is where the traveler control line attaches to the traveler
The main sail swung quickly across towards the other side of the boat, We had a preventer rigged, which is an extra line we ran in case this exact thing happened. It “prevents” the boom from flying all the way across the boat, unless the preventer breaks, which it did.
Failure number one. Once the preventer let loose, all the force transferred to the traveler car that slides on a track on the cockpit floor. You can see it in the photo. The traveler car has control lines attached to it by a shackle to keep it from sliding on it’s own. With all the force now on the traveler car, it loaded up the control line and the stainless steal shackle that attaches the two together snapped.
Failure number two. The traveler car now raced along the track at warp speed. There is a stopper screwed into the track to stop the traveler car from coming off. The stopper is attached with a 5/16 stainless steel bolt. When the car hit the stopper, the impact was so great it sheared the bolt right off.
Failure number 3. The car then came off the track, bent the stainless tube that runs 90 degrees across the track (see photo) and ALL the ball bearing flew out of the car and started rolling everywhere across the cockpit. This all happened very quickly and dramatically.
The main sheet that controls the main sail was now no longer attached to the boat, and was flying about the cockpit with a hug block attached to it and the traveler car. It was a very dangerous situation!
I was so angry with myself for making such a STUPID mistake that caused real damage to the boat. I let my self-anger get in the way of solving the real problem, which was getting the boom and mainsail under control so as to not cause any more damage. I had everyone trying to pick up ball bearings as the boom swung about (the ball bearings were critical to fixing the traveler and I had no replacements.) Thankfully my cousin Chris had a more clear head and had us drop the mainsail to reduce the impact of everything swinging around. We then used some line to strap the main sheet block back on to the traveler track so everything was now safe, and we could start working on a fix.
The Fix
We gathered up as many ball bearings as we could, and Chris began loading them back into the traveler car (see photo). We had about 2/3 of the total bearings needed, but what we have will work for now.
We then slid the traveler car back on to the track and used dynema lashing line to reattach the traveler control line to the traveler car. We removed the sheared off bolt that held on the traveler stopper and installed a new bolt.
Next we strapped down the boom with support lines on each side so it would not swing at all with all the waves constantly rolling us around. We were then able to reattach the traveler block to the traveler car, and we were back in business!
The entire repair took about 1.5 hours to complete. The entire crew did a FABULOUS job of getting the repair done, lead by Chris!
The repair to my ego? That will take much longer…