Scarlet Oyster - last 100miles!

Hi all,

Looks like we will be into the top of St. Lucia on this stb gybe, which
makes life simple, having a great last days run in perfect conditions
20knots and 155deg TWA, even the waves are being easy to read!

What an adventure this race has been! Completely different to last year,
from the wind conditions to breakages that nearly ended our race it has been
quite a roller coaster!

My team on board have really worked hard together to face and overcome the
challenges presented to us.

The first 36hrs of punishing upwind work was probably quite a shock to my
team who had seen brochure shots of blue skies and downwind sailing surfing
down a rolling Atlantic swell! The boat coped well, and I was happy with
our route which got us the right side of most the shifts yet kept us out of
the worst of the conditions.

Day 3 was a bit of a low point! Did not blog about this before as did not
want to concern those in the UK, but at 0930UT shortly after hoisting our
old A-sail we heard a loud bang from the rig, a glance up revealed that the
stb D2 stay had failed... Fortunately we were rigged for an immediate
envelope take down, so could get the pressure off the rig, which was bending
alarmingly on the swell. Fortunately our babystay is just under the
spreader 2, so we lashed this to the toe rail to stabilise the mast. I
went up to take a look, but with the cross swell I was getting thrown
around, which was quite scary as throwing 100kg at a slightly compromised
rig at the point where the support is missing is not something you want to
do. It did prove that the rig was sturdy enough for Alex to work up there
with his 65kg frame!

With a rod rigged boat it is quite hard to make a successful jury rig, as
the rod attachments are not suitable for any lashings, and the rods are very
stiff so any rope replacement is likely to be too stretchy to support the
rig properly. A few phone calls to riggers confirmed that if we could find
a way to keep the rig in column in all conditions then the rig should be
safe, but none could think of a viable way to attach any lines to the part
of the rig requiring support.

Turning around and getting back to land seemed the only option, but with
20-25kn winds and bid seas this would likely have brought the rig down. One
rigger advised that any distance downwind was better than even 200miles
upwind! One thing was certain even to return upwind we would need to make a
jury rig whilst sailing downwind first.

After some deliberation I came up with a plan, this involved a strop around
the spreader bases at spreader 2, with the lines coming off the front of the
mast so the mainsail could still be lowered, we had a fair bit of vectran
core which is quite low stretch, and very strong to make a stay from. It
was quite easy to get a strop around the outside end of spreader 1 so this
gave the rig some support. The next part of the plan was to utilise the
checkstay tang which is 1m below the spreader 2 to get another strop and
vectran stay onto. Both these stays have adjustable lashings so we can
adjust the tension to keep the rig in column. After 9hrs of measuring,
cutting, splicing, and lashing, we had a rig that looked viable!

Luckily we were able to sail in the direction we wanted the whole time and
were probably only losing 2knots, quite a penalty but we had built up a
handy lead before this. I felt the rig looked safe to carry on with and all
onboard voiced turning round was not something they wanted to do!

All a bit tired we elected to white sail through the night, fortunately
there was enough wind and angle to do this without losing too much.

Day 4 I felt that if we were going to carry on we needed to make sure that
the rig would hold, so the old asail was again hoisted, at this time wind
speed and angle were hard to assess as the first nights winds had all but
blown the masthead gear off the rig, and i felt it too risky to send Alex to
the mast head in big waves with big wind and a rig that had been through a
bit of an ordeal!

Anyway we spent the day blasting along at speeds at times in excess of
17knots, all the time monitoring the rig, at no time did it move out of
column, result!

All was going swimmingly till after dark when the waves became harder to
read. We were under cloud in squally conditions with wind gusting to
35knots or so, we could see the back of the cloud and clearer skies behind
so decided to carry on hoping for the breeze to drop a little... One wave
rounded us down sharply and we ended up chinese gybing, fortunately the
preventer held, and the kite remained full. We were about to release the
preventer to try and get the boat on her feet when I realised that the kite
was pulling us forwards again, with just enough speed to gybe the boat back
on to the right gybe, scary moment but we got away with it! The good news
was that the rig which I had been watching the whole incident looked fine!

As the cloud had nearly passed we again carried on (perhaps a drop of spin
would have been wise!). All seemed well and we started cracking a few jokes
as we roared along surfing over 16knots at times, then another wave caught
us out and we spun out this time into a heavy broach. I called for the guy
to be blown so we could get the kite off quickly, in hindsight we should
have born away first, as the kite snatched full the wrong way through the
fore triangle as the guy was released, this catapulted the pole into the
forestay, shattering the carbon pole on impact, the remains of the pole and
kit then demolished our anti wrap netting, and the whole lot ended up
wrapped round the forestay. After an hour or so on the forestay cutting
ropes away we got everything tidied up with the kite almost in one piece and
nothing but the pole significantly out of action. The jib was reset for the
rest of the night.

I guess the guys on Quokka were having dramas of their own as they did not
make any real gains, perhaps they wisely did not hoist a kite?! Anyway, with
the wind shifting S we soon had a good angle SW with the jib on the toerail,
so the kite was not really needed for a few days, we flirted a bit with our
new A7, but this being so new was quite an angry sail on refill and made the
boat a bit tricky to drive, it seems that Quokka and Zen were under similar
sail plan as they were not moving away from us, so we decided to play it
safe and make 95% speeds and relax a bit.

A plan was hatched to repair the pole, the pipecot tubes fitted tightly side
by side in the pole, so we made them into an internal splint. Some spare (I
hope they were spare!) battens were used to make an external splint, we
chopped the batten down to 80cm lengths, and screwed 8 of these with 6
screws or so each to the pole. We then wound a thick whipping twine around
the whole splint tightly, and then covered that with some self amalg tape to
make it look pretty, As I type it has worked perfectly since.

We kept Quokka firmly in our sights and apart from a private wind hole, we
were keeping pace. We could see a vacuum of wind developing under a low
pressure to the N, my thinking was the S option would pay, as suggested by
the gfs model, Quokka went straight. The slower boats behind had a good
option N, so we were worried that they may get a jump on us if we got stuck
in the middle with Quokka. After losing a fair few miles diving S we were
rewarded with the model changing suggesting Quokka had it right and we had
it very wrong. We aborted our S march and pointed back at st Lucia, with
the forecast suggesting a long 2 day park up for us! A grumpy yours truly
looked at every scenario to get out the hole, the only good news was that
there was forecast a light N wind, so we could at least reach out. Luckily
we had 5-6kn of wind not the forecast 2-3kn so we wriggled free, before all
was lost, just!

Since then the trades have kicked in and Scarlet has been doing what she
does best surfing down the Atlantic waves powered by our big runner. We
have kept this up through 35kn squalls in no vis at night to try and reduce
our deficit, this has been very stressful at times and at times 8hr driving
stints required to keep the boat from wiping out, the guys have been
fantastic, and have been doing a great job keeping the pace up in the
20-25knot stuff while I have been sleeping off the night time driving!

We have noticed a few boats around us making great pace for a while then
slowing, I suspect some have suffered gear failure, we have been lucky and
kept the boat in one piece (at last).

There have been other challenges, but team Scarlet are still fighting hard
to get the best result we possibly can, sleep has been in short supply, but
humor still survives (most the time!).

I am very proud of what we have achieved in this race, and whether we win
lose or draw, it has been one hell of an adventure!

Bring on the rum!

Love to all

Team Scarlet (Lobster/Tortoise)