Blog Day 53
Latitude 51 33.05S
Longitude 27 46.83W
Barometer 1011
Air Temp 4c
Local Time 0730 UTC-3
LIVE TRACKER
Hi all,
Well today I am doing something a little different. I am writing this blog right as I woke up rather than as I went to sleep. After completing the blog yesterday, I decided to put the daylight hours to good use and get some more jobs done. The winds have been between 10 to 20 knots all day from the WNW and this made for a fairly flat deck. One of the biggest jobs that I had been putting off was the wind generator blades. I currently have two sets of wind generators where I had broken the blades in the extreme knockdowns that occurred in that week of storms before rounding Cape Horn. It has been too rough to change them out before and when I had light winds, I was so exhausted from the Cape Horn rounding and days with almost no sleep that it was the last thing I wanted to do, but now it needed to be done.
I left Australia with three full sets of replacement blades but I had already used two of those sets a few days before those knockdowns. I also have to say that I don’t normally have this much issue with the wind generators and so the amount of knock downs and the sheer force of the water running over the boat is impressive to break the carbon fibre blades. So, I have three wind generators on the boat, all in a row on the back deck, one on port, middle and the last one on the starboard corner. The middle one has so far been able to hold up without damage to its blades as it has been dunked the least, but I have been holding on to my final complete set of blades with the idea that I would keep them for the middle wind generator as this would give them the longest use case.
But now, after looking at it, and after checking over the middle generator blades, I decided that I would use the last set of good blades for the port side wind generator. Normally in the storms I am on a port tack so the port side wind generator would 'in-theory' be the furthest away from the water and have the longest life. I then have a collection of 6 slightly damaged blades from different units that I felt I could make work for a while. All these blades have a crack of some form, some more damaged than others but they had yet to break. I knew that they would work for a sometime, and I might just get lucky. The problem with using this collection of blades is that when you get a set from the factory, they are perfectly weighted and balanced. However, with the jumble of assorted blades, I was likely going to have an imbalance in the system. This is not really the end of the world, but it would likely make the unit vibrate and make a bit of noise, but I figured I could live with that. In the end it didn't take too long to change the blades over an hour later it was done.
I also went and checked on my rudder repair and found that my brackets were holding up really well, but the central bolt holding the hydraulic ram to its mount continues to keep trying to undo itself and I worried that it would completely un-thread, which would be bad. So, I climbed back into the rudder compartment and partially unscrewed it so I could add some lock tight to it. This is a substance that you use on threads that helps bond the threads together and minimizes things like vibrations from unscrewing things. I also had already decided that I was going to change the hydraulic rams over in the neama 2000 system which is the computer part of the boats B & G Instruments system. This ended up being quite a simple job of unscrewing the two auto pilot computers, switching them, and plugging them back in. The difficulty came with it being such a small area as the connections are located in a little pocket/cupboard behind the navigation station and it was a tight working space.
Note from Mum - In the absence of video or photo’s coming through from Lisa at the moment, I thought I would include this. instead.
While I had the navigation station open, I also tried a factory reset of my satellite system but that is still unresponsive so I will be waiting for further instructions from the Tech Support team in the USA on how to proceed. It has been very heavy fog all day. I have been able to sail with the full mainsail and the no 1 jib out but as night closed in and I started to think of getting some sleep the winds started to build to just above 20 knots and I needed to go on deck to change out the no 1 jib with the smaller no 2-jib sail. It was well and truly dark now and I got a complete shock when I climbed out on deck to find clear skies and no fog. I have been sailing in various degrees of intense fog for almost a week now so to be able to see clearly around me was a shock. Not only that, but it was an almost full moon above me in a clear night sky filled with stars. We were sailing so well that it felt like one of those magical moments where I needed to stay on deck and simply enjoy.
By 8pm I had managed to be up all day this time and I was starting to feel the lack of sleep. I went below to get ready for bed. I brushed my teeth and boiled the kettle and just before I climbed into bed, I thought to myself I would go on deck for 5 more minutes and just watch the world go by. I climbed out, and when I had a moment to take in my surroundings the conditions could not have been more different than 30 minutes earlier. There was a low-lying thin cloud and not a single star in sight. We were right back to that Southern Ocean grey skies again, and the clear skies a moment ago felt like a distant memory.
I went to bed and slept in short blocks until 1am when I needed to do a micro plastic sample change. I woke again at 3am for the second sample change before blissfully sleeping until 7am. I may have managed several hours in bed but I have to say I still woke feeling tired and so sleep is going to be a bit of a priority over the coming days ahead of a possible storm on Monday.
And so for now I am going to get on and enjoy the day but before I go I would like to take a moment to thank tonight's wonderful degree sponsors.
Thank you to:
030 West - Seawind Catamaran - Richard Ward - thanks so much Richard for your amazing support, I love teaching sailing on the Seawind Cats.
027 West - Sydney to Hobart 'Sidewalk Cafe' Crew - In memory of our inspirational skipper, sailing master, teacher and friend Jack Baxter, Skipper of the Sidewalk Cafe. Thank you to the Sidewalk Cafe Crew for your amazing support of my project.
Have a great day all.
Good night, all.
SPONSORS
TECHNICAL PARTNERS
