Friday 28th  April 2023

Sopers Hole, Tortola  18^o 23.2N  64^o 42.1W

Today's Blog by David  (Time zone: BST -5)

Well, you can have too much of a good thing. And we have had rather a lot of it over the last few weeks, as well as some pretty tedious bits.  

Just to get the bad bits our of the way we have experienced the following mechanical issues:

1                       Domestic alternator failed again – this one lasted only 200 hours.  Replaced with a spare.

2                       The main sail furler snapped.  Disappointing but I guess not altogether surprising given the torsional load on it every time the sail is wound in or out and that the boat has covered 62,000 miles. For this we had no spare, so we had to wait in and around Antigua while a part was flown from the UK, and some local riggers fitted it.  A sail maker repaired some minor damage to the sail itself’

3                       During the course of routine maintanance it is normal for the crew to waggle their cocks – err, seacocks that is.  The idea is that a periodic wagggle stops the cocks from becoming encrusted with crustacea (sic) and seizing up.  Well, in the process of one such routine waggle, the main engine raw water intake seized in a half open position and wouldn’t allow enough water past to cool the main engine.  I had a spare, but not the tools to replace it. Fortunately, a local repair shop was able to supply a couple of  chunky chaps to do it for us – and surprisingly promptly.

4                       The compass light bulbs blew and needed replacement (with a spare).

5                       The gas springs that hold the lazarette open have essentially worn out and need replacement. No spare here but there is one in the UK with a crew member that was to be (see later blog). And the gas springs on the other deck lockers also need replacement.

6                       The mainsail furler having been replaced and the mainsail reinstalled, this is a photograph of the bottom of the furler with the mainsail tack secured to a u-shaped hoop secured with with a clevis pin.

Well about a week ago we found some aluminium swarf on the deck.   A quick  inspection of the mainsail furler showed that said U – shaped hoop looked thus: 

A split pin had sheared, (how?), and the clevis pin had worked loose and the forced of the powered up sail simply bent the hoop until it touched the inside of the  aluminium mast as the sail was furled.  A large number of people told us that we would need to get experienced riggers to remove the furler gearbox in order to get the clevis pin out – a step that proved an awful lot easier than putting the clevis pin back in after a nice man we found locally bent the hoop into the right shape.  Toby (who he?  - a crew member see later blog) spent a long hot afternoon astride the boom and with judicious application of the Dremel in approprate places successfully refitted it – a wonderful birthday present for me – because we were then ready to go!

7                        Well ….. nearly. While I was cleaning the impeller ahead of departure it became clear that the bilge pump was not pumping out the considerable amount of water thant I had just let in.  So four very sweaty hours were spent yeaterday trying to source and ulimately fix the fault – which I think was a corroded electrical connection.

So that’s you up to speed with the major issues – we also serviced both the engine and generator, and a sink drain pump and a numbder ot other routine tasks……

SO …… we’re ready for the off.. We have just time for one of these before dinner:

A “Pain Killer” – the cure for which there is no known disease