Genoa wars
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sun 18 Sep 2011 16:25
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Sunday 18th September 1459UTC
1559BST
18:41.75S 000:07.43E
Wind: SE 18Knots, COG 319Deg True, SOG
8.2Knots
Yep the wind is still dead behind me and merrily we
roll along! Through the night the expected wind was not quite as good as
forecast averaging about 14 knots most of the time making for quite a slow night
but a very comfortable one. Most of the time the wind at 14 knots and sailing at
140 deg apparent wind angle was just about enough to keep the mainsail
pressed but not enough to speed us along. So I got a good amount of
sleep.
This morning I got a small snapshot of what
sounded like a coastguard weather forecast on channel 16 on the VHF! Quite
bizarre. No ships to be seen anywhere, no radar marks, strange or otherwise and
about 400 miles away from St Helena. Maybe there is military/ coastguard
activity in the area what with Ascension islands only about 1,000 miles away now
and St Helena 400 (Tristan da Cunha is 1300 miles away and South Georgia 2,700
miles SW) perhaps I heard a broadcast from an unseen aircraft or military or
coastguard vessel out of radar sight? Who knows. Anyway that's not todays
drama.....
Sitting in as I like to do on a Sunday morning
reading the paper and eating bacon rolls, and in fact listening today to the BBC
world service on the HF Radio, I thought I should try again to find my back
brace which was somewhere aboard as my back has been giving me, ahem, a bit
of discomfort. Anyway finally I found it and rigged it on and it gave good
support and consequent relief.
Just after the bacon rolls I was standing in the
galley doing the dishes when silently there was deceleration. The day is
completely grey again and though the temperature is slowly creeping up (sea
temperature today has just crept above 20C ) it is still quite cool. Looking
out to the forward starboard quarter I could see only greyish /white. With
a quick look again I could see it was because the genoa was down, though
the clew was still supported by the pole.
Oh good grief! Could this be my worst nightmare?
Quickly on with lifejacket and harness (with personal 406 Mhz/GPS
EPIRB fitted) and up on deck. I was horrified. Here was the whole damn genoa in
the water partly under the boat and the head trailing about 6 metres
behind. To give you an idea the genoa is 25.5 metres / 85 ft in the luff and is
a 140% overlapping design so must be 12 + metres in the
foot.
The boat was still doing over five knots. The first
thing I rushed to do was stop! Stop and think. This could go badly pear shaped.
If I was not careful I could be dragged over by the sail, I could burst my
back, I could lose the sail altogether, it could be destroyed. Think!
Think! I thought....
Here was what I had to do. I could not risk using
the engine to manouvre the boat lest it foul the sail. The boat would not come
round to weather of the sail so, I put away the main and "hove to" still doing
1.8 knots. The wind was 18 knots. Sitting on the transom steps I tried
to hook the head out with the boat hook and to get a line around it. I
almost made it once or twice but as the boat was rolling too much and the sudden
weight coming on and off the sail as it scooped water when I tried to pull
it back to the boat, I had to abandon that idea as it proved to be too
dangerous. Think again....
Nothing for it but to start to haul the sail out of
the water by hand a few inches at a time. This you understand is a very heavy
sail - when dry. I used the rolling of the boat to try to scoop up a few inches
at a time. Of course as I slowly, gut bustingly got the sail in inch by
inch, the wind blowing across the boat wanted to do the Highland
Fling with it and that is the bit that worried me lest it flung a Highlander so
I clipped on.
Finally I had it all aboard. What had happened? As
I have told you I have been worried about chafe. What I think happened is this:
I had the head of the sail reinforced in Thailand. The head strap was then too
heavy to go through the jaws of the shackle so it was rigged with the
pin through the halyard swivel and the "U" in through the head strap of the
sail. I think here the swivel was able to chafe the cable ties
seizeing on the shackle pin which then worked out and ......... the
saill was free to head south to the Atlantic. Which it did.
OK Think. What now? I have a jib which is
not much good down wind. I have the spinaker which in the 20+ Knots
forecast, being alone and in conservative mood I am barred from using. I have
the mainsail still and the engine. St Helena is only 400 miles away. I
could repair it when anchored there ................ or OR I could kick its ass
right back up that forestay!
Being a well practiced ass kicker I went for the
latter option.
Preparations went ahead. If I got this wrong and
got the thing only half way up I was in real trouble. So the foredeck was
cleared. The pole was put away which I can assure you is a heavy duty job
in itself. The genoa luff and leech were roughly sorted by handing over hand
along the respective edges. Now the tense bit... would the halyard swivel come
down or was it now jammed at the top. I rigged the halyard extension line (all
Rhiann Marie's halyards are terminated on Antal tracks as they exit the mast)
and held my breath. After one or two bounces - hallelujah! It started coming
down.
I then battered the head strap of the sail into
shape to accomodate the head shackle the other way up and re-moused it. It was
tricky to get the bolt rope entered into the foil as the which is 8 metres
away from the mast mounted winch. I got a couple of metres up then re
rigged the mainsail out to starboard. all the way out and prevented. I got
the engine on and pointed the boat dead down wind and gunned the engine. I
managed to get the apparent wind down to 9 knots and the genoa mostly shielded.
I turned the foil till the sail was entering just forward of starboard. I then
ran between the bow gathering up the luff tape/ bolt rope as best I could
to "pre-feed" and back to the winch. I then dragged the clew of the genoa under
the sail and to a bow cleat and went like hell shuttling back and forth between
the "pre-feeding" at the bow and the winch. I knew it could go badly pear shaped
and was most likely to do so after most of the sail was up. If it took a
bad wrap round the forestay I was screwed.
Now I have a terribly bad habit in life of starting
to write the "victory speech" in my head when the finish line is in sight.
This, taking my eye off the ball, more often than not tempts fate to
intervene with the pear-shaping phenomenon.....
Today I stayed focussed and the job was a complete
success. It took three solid hours of gruelling work but now here we are bowling
along in the 20 knots wind which has arrived as forecast - with the genoa
proudly back up where she belongs.
I have not yet taken my back brace off. I
hope the shrapnel does not fall out when I do. In the meantime I have to go now
and make dinner. The freezer and fridge compressors are both playing up and I am
carefully planning my diet to eat up the food most likely to go off soonest in
the event of complete failure.
As a footnote I am just crossingthe Greenwich
Meridian now as I end this blog entry. In case things go badly pear shaped this
is one of my options for claiming I have "sailed round the world". The next
opportunity comes up when I cross the longditude of 001:17.608 West where we
departed Southampton water into the Solent two years ago.
However I shall most credibly be able to argue that
crossing my out ward line just to the north west of the Cape Verdes would be the
point where I would close the circle. However that is a chafe and wear and tear
inducing 2,700 miles away from here................
Thanks so much to all of you have been mailing. I
do get them all but am not able to reply individually to everyone from the
boat.
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