Occhi Indaco - Burned freckled bums and broken rudders

After a completely calm day with no winds at all, the night showed itself from a completely different angle. It was actually a lovely night to start with, not as foggy as it had been the night before. We still kept an eye on the radar all the way out to 24 nm for these tricky squalls … oh boy they are tricky. We saw a few spots here and there but nothing to really worry us as they soon dissipated. It got a bit greyish and foggy and a big squall went in front of us and we just had to adjust course a few degrees to avoid it, a little rain and mild breeze passed us. We went on trying to zig and zag our way between the squalls. At one point we thought we were going to thread the needle between two storms but then, of course, they merged together leaving us in the middle. And it was pouring down cats and dogs … rain, rain and more rain, we saw the typical wind pattern where the wind direction swings around 360 degrees, but luckily the winds were not too strong so it wasn’t bad. After almost 2 hours of heavy rain we were completely soaked to the core. We got to shower for the second time today!

We have been motoring for the last few days, and it is no fun at all. The engine noise is completely deafening it takes over every minute of every day. The constant groaning is wearing us down. To our relief we did get to turn it off during lunch while we were served this absolutely lovely paella. Sunday is wine day… the chef of the day might have been a little tipsy after tasting a little too much wine before putting it in the meal. The rest of the wine and a few beers were allowed with the lunch.

It was actually Sunday yesterday and initially our day off… the the chores had maybe been done a little half hearted. So Skipper thought we should give the boat a thorough wash down.

Today the big sun shade was taken out and the engine was stopped, a line was thrown out, the passerelle and swim platform were put down. In we went, one from the boom, one from the passerelle , one in with a big splash. One was keeping watch. Some went in from the bow… in and out of the water for a long time … all like kids having fun. What a nice treat. At one point, we decided a Skinny dip in the lovely warm water sounded nice. Later some crew members discovered that their normally covered white bottoms were unfortunately now burned freckled bums.

The skipper hasn’t liked the way the boat was handling for a number of days so he asked a crew member with swim goggles to have a look at the rudder. The response that came back was “so, do you want the bad news or the bad news?”

First bad news - the prop was l partially fouled with some fishing line that was holding some seaweed in place. One crew member managed to dive down and clear the prop.

But the worst bad news was we saw that we were missing half of our rudder. The skipper put on a mask and had a look and saw about 50 cm of exposed rudder stock.
Guess that explains why the boat has been going slow and we were having issues controlling the vessel in the squalls.

ARC rally control has been notified about our situation as we might need some help to get the last miles in. We are trying to run the engine as efficiently as possible to make it to Rodney Bay with the diesel onboard. Lots of calculations being done to determine remaining range.

Given that there was not much that could be done with the rudder, the crew decided more play time was needed and one crew member used the time to get in a nice 3 km swim alongside the boat. Unfortunately for them, this accounted for one of the burned freckled bums.

We finally got the entangled fishing line untangled … what a project… something that will definitely be remembered by all. What tenacity. The line went out with a new lure and we are all hopeful that we will catch a big nice fish.

Night came on and we had a nice cuddle puddle at the bow to watch the sunset. Legs and arms were all entangled in each other-we were a snuggly happy bunch. The guitar came out and sun went down with beauty all around. Everything was cast purple and golden.

Saturday was a really hot day and several crew were experiencing heat exhaustion and dehydration. We have switched to normal bottle water instead of the water from the water maker. Even though we were aware of the lack of minerals and the potential higher risk of dehydration when only drinking the water from the water maker we unfortunately did not compensate enough. We tried to keep cool with bucket showers on deck.

We did have to do a little maintenance, the furler mechanism wire had only gotten a temporary fix so it had started fraying again and needed an other fix. Other than that everyone relaxed and chatted lazily around on deck.

Skipper is a little sad today because of the rudder situation. After so many repairs accomplished at sea, this one has more impact to it as we limp our way to Rodney Bay. After all this he still loves his crew and we are taking good care of him. ❤️