Storm Damage
Hello Friends-
Slogging along out here in the Southern Ocean with the far-away goal of rounding Cape Horn staying elusively… well… far away!
I am now about 1,500 miles out but still weaving a zig zag downwind gybing course with the westerly wind directly behind me on my easterly path. This causes me to sail extra miles from a straight-line path and therefore daily "distance made good to the mark" is about 1/3 less than actual boat speed average would indicate. Such is life. Another 7-9 days.
So Monday night I experienced some of the worst conditions I have ever encountered and am still trying to assimilate the learning. The forecast was for a steady 35k wind gusting to 60- for a 48 hour period- which is a long time to be under such an assault. I had 4 reefs in the mainsail and the storm jib up- as little sail as possible to keep steerage- but the boat became increasingly hard to steer in the large and confused seas. When a big puff came, the boat would naturally head up- and then the pilot would over-correct back- causing the boat to teeter dead downwind- and if a wave kicked the stern the wrong way- the mainsail and jib would backwind and attempt to gybe the boat. I had both a vang and a preventer (a line from the end of the boom lead forward and back to a winch to keep the boom in position), so the boom really couldn't move, but the sail would backwind- the battens reverse- and it was just not a good thing.
So I sailed a bit higher course and turned the auto-pilot up to its highest setting to prevent this over-correcting- and before long the Auto-pilot alarm went off with the message "Rudder Drive Unit Failure". Shit. I quickly switched from Port to Starboard pilot systems, and crawled back into the aft steering compartment to see what the problem was and found a bunch of water and hydraulic fluid sloshing around.... not good. So I grabbed my bucket and sponge and laying on my belly mopped up the mess- while becoming covered in the slime- but could not identify the source of the leak. I suspect the drive unit over-heated and may have blown a seal in the hydraulic ram unit- so I am not sure if it is toast- or if it might be useable on the mellower settings- TBD- when (or if) it ever calms down.
Being down to one auto-pilot unit sucks for sure and I am pissed because the unit should not have failed, as it was brand new before the trip, and should be able to handle these conditions.... but what are you gonna do.... just deal with it.
Meanwhile, on deck, the storm raged on- wind gusts to 65- completely chaotic sea state- and I'm just hangin' on- hoping nothing more breaks before the storm abates. Not fun. Luckily nothing more did break, and eventually the wind and seas came down and once I thought we were OK, I collapsed in my bunk for 6 hours- completely exhausted.
So.... my take away and strategy for the next gale- which is due tomorrow night- might be to take the mainsail down completely (or as far down as a square-top main will go) and try to use the larger staysail to keep the boat tracking better downwind but not have to worry about gybing the main and possibly damaging either the sail or the traveler or whatever. I guess it’s a bit of a laboratory out here and I'm always looking for solutions when things don't go as you hoped or planned.
On to Cape Horn!
Cheers
Joe
