When we got up this morning, we were steering on one rudder, the auto-pilot was failing, and the mainsail was stuck. I asked Joe if he needed anything and he told me to pray the mainsail would fall down on its own. That didn’t work either.
The night before we had decided to pass Port Elizabeth as an option to pull out. If the auto-pilot died right then, we would have 24 hours or so to get to Mosel Bay, the next option to pull out. We decided we could hand steer that far if needed and then assess our ability to continue at that point. If we didn’t feel like we could continue, we would pull out in Mosel Bay and pick up another person to help us steer the rest of the way to Cape Town.
The next morning, with about 420 miles to go, Joe suggested we hand steer during the day and save the auto-pilot for the night. This seemed reasonable. Also, the wind was building so steering with one rudder would be more difficult for the auto-pilot than for humans. The wind was supposed to die at night so, all in all, the plan was strong.
Joe stayed at the helm and I started school with the kids. I explained the situation to them and let them know we really were going to count on them more than normal for the next few days. All of them pitched in, with Cobin cooking all three meals (pancakes, quesadillas and burgers) for the day and the girls acting as sous chefs.
Joe and I alternated watches every hour. During his watch sometime during mid-morning, he said, “Lara, I’ve lost steerage and there’s a ship coming!” Sure enough, I went out and saw a large ship in the distance. These cargo ships come fast – almost as soon as you see them, it seems like they are on top of you. Previously paralleling the cargo ship’s path, we now had turned to cross right in front. And we were headed straight for the coast.
As Joe went down to the steering compartment to whack away at the hydraulic steering that he had previously locked into place, I stood helplessly by the steering wheel. With 25 knots of wind, gusting to 30, and the stuck mainsail still working away with the jib, we were easily doing 12 knots straight for shore. Joe said, “We have about 7 – 8 miles until we hit the beach.” Joe doesn’t usually say things like that unless he thinks it’s an actual possibility. I did some math and thought we had little over an hour to put a different steering scheme in place if Joe couldn’t get an easy fix.
Mercifully, his actions in the stern compartment paid off and we were able to resume our course. Joe took the wheel and I called the cargo ship, called Cape Moss, to let them know we were having difficulties with our steering. They helpfully offered to pass us on our port side which gave us plenty of leeway to have future struggles without getting run over by them. OK – back to just the normal issues. Just to add to the fun, the starboard escape hatch in the head that had been Carl’s private bidet was leaking again. Joe and Cobin disassembled and reassembled the entire window in Richards Bay and it is much improved but now there’s a steady stream of water leaking straight into the bilge, adding several gallons of seawater for me to bail out each day.
Oh and at some point we couldn’t run the starboard engine to charge the battery or heat water to wash the dishes because a belt broke. So I had to boil water to clean the greasy hamburger pan. Joe changed the belt the next morning so we were back to full strength on the engines.
For any of you that are contemplating boat ownership, make no mistake – this is your future. You may have different issues but no boat owner (even/especially the ones that buy brand new boats) escapes them. For those of you that already have boats, I’m sure you’re laughing and nodding along. Cruising is often described as “fixing your boat in exotic locations.” These moments are interspersed with delightful ones but you will never escape the issues.
Moving along with the story – it was time for my watch and I walked out, asking Joe for the jacket. It was blowing 20 – 25 and the waves were sizable but not extreme. He told me, “Hold on a second – we need to do Operation Mainsail.” OK. What does that mean? Joe explained that we needed to get the mainsail down and that he would need to climb the mast to either loosen the shackle holding the sail to the halyard or cut the halyard (rope that holds up the top of a sail). He wanted me to drive and Cobin to crank him up. Having cranked Joe partway up the mast earlier so he could examine the stuck mainsail, I knew that it would not be an easy task for anyone to get Joe up expeditiously.
Operation Mainsail would depend upon getting Joe up to the top of the stuck sail quickly. The less time he spent swinging around the mast, the better. I just wasn’t confident that Cobin would have the stamina to make it happen as quickly as it needed to happen. I suggested Cobin drive but Joe said, “The driving is the most difficult part. If we accidentally gybe, the person on the mast is going to swing out and potentially get slammed back into the mast or we could break something. We can’t put Cobin in that position.”
From having driven earlier, I knew what he meant. With the high winds and following seas, we had a very small margin of error. Go too far one way and the wave would catch you and, with our impaired steering, it would be very difficult to turn against it. Go too far the other way and you gybe and the boom swings around (although we had a preventer in place) and potentially breaks things or at the very least, throws everyone off balance. OK, so Cobin wouldn’t drive. It didn’t sound very appealing to me either.
Joe said, “Ask Cobin if he wants to go up the mast.” I called Cobin out and told him there were three jobs – going up the mast, driving, or cranking someone up the mast. He said, “I’d rather drive or crank – I’ve been up the mast before and it’s not fun when the boat is moving.” This from the boy that just did the zipline and giant swing across the canyon by Victoria Falls. OK, so that leaves Cobin cranking.
A thought came into my brain. A scary one but not out of the realm of possibility. Why couldn’t I go up the mast? Since Joe and Cobin typically went up the mast when it was an option, I didn’t immediately consider it. I’m guessing Joe didn’t want to pressure me but when I suggested it, he didn’t object. I had already visualized how I would carry out a plan when Joe first showed me the issue and felt like it was well within my scope of abilities. I can both pull and cut things – this wasn’t exactly an operation that required finesse.
That left Joe to drive and the same issue with Cobin cranking. That was easily solved when I suggested we use the windlass, just as we normally do to raise the mainsail. This requires two people – one to hold the halyard and one to push the button, but both Marin and Cobin have regularly performed those jobs so it wasn’t any different than normal except instead of hoisting a sail, they would hoist me. Marin could stay in the cockpit and push the button and be right next to Joe in case she needed support. Joe could focus completely on driving and I would focus on not swinging around.
I got my harness on and Cobin put a small carabiner on the rigging knife so I could attach it to my gear loop. I also took up a spare bit of line to try to trip the shackle and my favorite sail tie to secure the halyard block to the mast so it wouldn’t swing wildly if I was able to detach the sail.
Before I left the ground, Joe told me to go to the first spreader and make sure I was mentally ready to keep going. He reminded me that if I got hurt, there was no one that could come up to help me so I needed to keep my wits about me and not let go or I would swing wildly with the motion of the waves. I clarified my communication words with both Cobin and Marin, telling them I would use the terms, “Go, stop, and lower.” From climbing, we all know stories of people who have been dropped due to unfortunate miscommunications involving simple commands that sound like other words. I didn’t want that to happen to me!
Marin pushed the button which started the windlass going. Cobin pulled on the spinnaker halyard which was wrapped around the windlass and I started going up. It was faster than I expected! I asked Marin to pause so I could put my safety scheme into place. I planned to clip a daisy chain (short “leash”) into the cables supporting the mast so that if I let go, I wouldn’t swing too far. This worked OK until the first spreader when my system got tangled and prevented me from going up, even though the halyard was still pulling on me. Thankfully Marin spotted the issue and let go of the button before I got stretched out or broke part of the boat. I had just decided to discard the plan when Joe yelled out the same thing. Neither of us wanted the safety system to be the thing that caused me to get injured.
I was at the first spreader – the place Joe recommended I take stock. I took a deep breath and assessed my mental state. I didn’t want to spend too much time looking at the views or the wildly tilting boat underneath me. As long as I focused on the metal immediately in front of me, I was OK. I was nervous but I knew that if I didn’t complete this task, someone else would have to do it. Conditions were only going to get more severe later in the day and it would be a big relief to everyone if we could get the main down. So I told Marin to keep going.
I had to climb up and over the second spreader and my shoe got wedged in a crack but I was able to free it without too much difficulty. The swaying of the mast was definitely more intense up higher. A few feet above the second spreader and I was at the top of the sail. I wedged myself into place. Helpfully, the top of the sail had gotten stuck just at a spot where two cables attached to the mast at a slight angle as they came down from the third spreader. I could straddle the mast and wedge each leg against one of these cables, with my back against a third cable and feel fairly secure as I worked.
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I didn’t need to hurry. I took the sail tie off my body and wrapped it around the halyard, holding it against the mast. I didn’t have as much length as I wanted to tie a good knot so I reconfigured it and realized I had passed the sail tie around the line tied to me when I wrapped it around the mast. That wouldn’t work! Simple mistakes like this are what could cause major problems later. I retied the line and assessed the situation. It would be easy enough to cut the halyard but it was a brand new line and cost at least $700. I hated to cut it without at least trying to trip the shackle.
I took off the short line Marin had carefully attached to my harness and reminded myself not to drop it. Just to be sure, I attached one end to the block and passed the other through the shackle. I gave a few halfhearted tugs but saw that the entire weight of the mainsail was hanging on the shackle. It was very unlikely that I was going to free it. I yelled down that I was going to cut the halyard and Joe told me to go ahead. I realized that if I just cut it, the block attached to the mainsail would be free. For some reason I envisioned that it would go flying down to the boat and would land somewhere we didn’t want it. I forgot that it was also shackled to the sail which was attached to the mast so, in retrospect, this was an unnecessary step. However, I was trying to be very careful so I attached the sail tie to the block so it wouldn’t free fall. Then I took my knife off my harness. I was also worried about dropping it so I clipped it to the block. I sawed through the halyard and, with a satisfying “whoosh,” the halyard snapped and the sail dropped. Success!
Except it only dropped a few feet to the second spreader. My ingenious sail tie to the block meant that the sail was now attached to the mast and could only descend as far as the sail tie could descend. Joe yelled, “Cut the sail tie!” I realized that my ingenious plan to attach the knife to something meant that my knife had dropped with the sail, sail tie, and block. But it was still attached! Cobin lowered me to the second spreader and I stretched out and cut my favorite sail tie. The sail dropped with another satisfying whoosh – this time to the first spreader where a knot on the dangling sail tie caught in the same place my foot had been caught earlier. Just as Cobin had lowered me to that point, the knot worked itself free and the sail dropped all the way down.
Cobin lowered me carefully to the deck – mission accomplished! We did lose one halyard and one favorite sail tie but, all things considered, it was a total success. Marin even managed to record large portions of the adventure on film although, like most climbing videos, I’m guessing it is mainly footage of my distant rear end.
This is a prime example of how situations that might seem unpleasant or even awful, actually are the best things about sailing. With all the issues that arise and the lack of sleep and unpleasantness of sea sickness, sometimes I (and others) wonder why we do this. But here’s one of the answers, at least for me. It’s one of the few places/situations in the world where you get to solve real problems with all the members of your family where the results actually matter. It’s not contrived, and there are no do-overs if it doesn’t go well the first time.
There is tremendous satisfaction in successfully solving problems we confront and we all gain confidence in ourselves almost on a daily basis. Today all of us took a big leap forward and it was worth the long nights and tedious sloughing through wind and waves on the nose.
Of course, the warm fuzzies only lasted a few hours. Then night fell and the auto-pilot died within two hours of us turning it on. So now we’re hand steering for the rest of the trip. At least the winds are slated to be lighter for the majority of it!