Dear Umiko Fans!
Blog 3 Day 3 24Hr Run through the water 269nm
I hope this blog finds you well. I am sorry it is a bit late…. It was always going to happen! Last night at approximately 20;00 UTC after a lovely Lasagne we broached. Like many things this broach was due to a confluence of small events.
It had recently been a watch change and there was a new helm driving the yacht. There was, as yet, no moon up and as a result there was no horizon. The wind had also been building and was not in the low 20’s. The straw that broke the camels back was a riding turn on the kite sheet winch. This meant that despite depowering the main the boat went over. I was down below and had just finished dinner. It seemed like slow motion and I knew what was happening. I immediately grabbed my lifelife-jacket braced myself. As UMIKO rolled over to 50.5 deg angle of heel we suffered a good old broach. I had been in the NAV station and was getting attacked by ICE which was flying out of the ICE Maker. #neverhadthatbefore #superyachtproblems
I soon managed to get on deck, a brief chat with Sean and I placed myself at the problem winch. The boat had settled at about 35 degrees and was pinned over with a large cacophony of noise. We worked together to free the riding turn by taking the sheet tail to another winch and working it through. A minute or so later and it was free. Sean eased the sheet enough to depower it and I got control of the sheet back on the winch. By this stage the helm had managed to get us back on course. A quick deck check and a look over of the A4 (now called Ghandi) for being so forgiving was in good shape…
We then elected to gybe for a few reasons: A there would be slightly less pressure in the north and we did not need any more. B. with he is underlying NW swell interacting with the easterly wind induced waves the other GYBE would be significantly easier to helm in the low light conditions.
The broach event sharpened everyone’s reflexes to how quickly things can go wrong and the rest of the evening went without incident. With lite winds we gybed back over onto port gybe in the morning. I was on the helm not long after the gybe when the tack line failed on “Ghandi” the kite. Luckily, we had put a safety strop on the tack so Stephane and Eric our French duo went forward to repair the tack line. After that Stephane went up the rig to check the halyards. All seems to be in order.
One casualty was Karina who while trying to keep the copious amounts of ICE from the icemaker covering the floor and the nav station fell over hurting her elbow. Despite this she still managed to make a lovely pizza and salad for lunch. She is a trooper.
We were running the generator during the broach incident but luckily everything mechanically was unaffected!
To another news we have been time travelling and at 12:00 the clocks went back with “A” watch bearing the brunt of the time shift. This is an important stage in order to keep sunrise, sunset etc with the natural rhythm of the day. It also shows that we are making good progress west!
In terms of wildlife my watch has not been that lucky but whales, dolphins and FLYING FISH have all been seen. I am hoping Daniel will share his experiences of the broach with you in a follow up blog!
Olly Out!
“All progress takes place outside the comfort zone."
Michael John Bobak