It’s a good thing I don’t write this diary just after I get up as I’m a bit of a grump in the morning until I’ve had my breakfast, particularly today. Last night, you see, was a bit of a nightmare.
It all started in the evening when I was trying to find the best course to sail for the night which would be closest to the direct route to France. It was cold and grey, and tipping down with rain which was dripping into the cabin through every orifice, so I was keen to get the boat settled for the night so I could have supper, watch a film, and crawl into the one reasonably dry bunk.
While tacking yet again in the feeble north-easterly the wheel suddenly jammed, so I gave it a bit of a heave upon which it jerked free and spun round and round. Oops, that’s not a good sign, I thought, and went below to take a look. The rudder is directly below the bunk in the aft cabin so I pushed aside the sodden bedding and saw to my horror that the steering cable had jumped off one of the pulleys and got jammed round the spindle.
In order to get it back on I had to unbolt the plate holding the pulley, and then remove the spindle and pulley so I could free the cable. This took an hour or so and was made very frustrating by the big swell which rocked the boat from side to side continually, sending me and my tools rolling across the cabin. Once I had it all back together and bolted it back in place something still wasn’t right as the cable was far too slack.
Tracing it back to the wheel meant removing lots of access panels and rummaging around in awkward little places like lockers behind toilets, and eventually I found another pulley which had broken free of it’s mountings. It was held in place by four bolts, three of which had broken, allowing the pulley to twist round and cause the cable to go slack, thereby jumping off the first pulley I’d worked on.
It must have taken a huge load on the rudder to cause such stress on the bolts, and was probably during the storm. Not having any bolts which were big enough I took one off each of two other pulleys, hoping the three remaining on each would be enough, and finally managed to get it all reassembled and working.
It took over three hours and by the end of it I was soaking wet as the aft cabin has more leaks than the Cabinet, all of which seemed to be concentrated exactly over the places I needed to work. Still, all’s well that ends well, and I was finally able to settle down with a meal and film at midnight.
On retiring for the night I left Alan in control as he has his own independent means of moving the rudder, so it meant there would be very little stress on the cable and pulleys. I definitely didn’t want to have to fix it again in the early hours! We set off into the darkness doing about 5 knots in the gentle breeze.
Around 4am I was awoken to find the wind had changed and the boat had tacked itself and was now stalled, just bobbing in the swell. Being a miserable old git when faced with such nonsense I just swore at it briefly and went back to bed, deciding we could stay where we were for the night.
This morning I rose to find things looking much better with the sun shining, the barometer risen to the giddy height of 1029 millibars, and a gentle breeze from – wait for it – the south-west! At last, back to the settled trade wind conditions I’ve been waiting for.
Since then I’ve been a busy bee as I found that a bolt had fallen off one of the mounting brackets of the Monitor and the pendulum lines were chafing, so I fixed that and got it back in action. Then I got all the sodden bedding, cushions and clothing out on deck to dry, so Odyssey now has a distinct trailer-park look to her with sundry tattered garments flapping from the railings.
Drying my cereals and stitching the genoa in the cockpit
Finally I took down the genoa (that’s the big sail at the front for you landlubbers), got out my needle and thread, and set to work trying to repair the tears in it. This is going to take a couple of days so in the meantime I’m using the drifter, which I will replace this evening with the working jib in case the wind gets up in the night.
So, although it’s been a testing 24 hours and we’ve made precious little progress at least I feel I’m a real sailor as I’ve been fixing things, drying things, and sewing sails. Ooooar me hearties! I definitely intend to splice the mainbrace tonight 🙂