It is our third night and sea and we have made very good progress.
This part of the Caribbean is notoriously windy and we have had strong trade
winds since we left St Lucia; rarely less than 20 knots, gusting up to 30
around the squalls. We spent Saturday and Sunday on starboard gybe, sailing west to keep within the band of stronger
wind, then on Monday morning we gybed onto port,
heading south towards the headland at Punta Gallinas on the northern Columbian
coast. As I write at 0500 local
time on Tuesday morning we have covered 580 miles in 60 hours, averaging almost
10 knots through the water - and that is fast.
One of the great problems of sailing for prolonged periods,
particularly at speed, is that ropes chafe as they rub against another surface.
If they do this for long enough, even the strongest of ropes will break which
can be dangerous if the rope is controlling a big sail in a strong wind. So
when I am doing my evening chafe check today I am alarmed to see that the genoa
sheet is badly chafed at the point where it passes through the jaws of the
spinnaker pole. The genoa sheet is a hefty 16mm diameter rope made of dyneema,
with a breaking strain greater than steel, but not immune to chafe, especially
under heavy load.
When we are sailing downwind we set the mainsail on one side
of the boat and the genoa on the other. To hold the genoa in position we run
the sheet through the end of the spinnaker pole which is attached to the mast
about 3 metres off the deck, with the outboard end of the pole suspended by two
rope guys and a topping lift so that it projects 90 degrees from the boat. By
running the genoa sheets through the jaws on the outboard end of the pole it
holds the genoa out like a large wing, the main another wing; hence the term
Goose-Winged.
The loads on the end of the genoa are significant. The clew
of the sail, where the sheet is attached, is subject to the greatest loads and
at 25 knots of wind the clew load on our genoa is over two tons. Imagine a rope
bearing that much load, rubbing back and forth on the stainless steel jaws of
the spinnaker pole continually for 24 hours, and you can understand the problem
of chafe. The way to avoid this is to winch the knot at the end of the sheet
hard against the jaws of the pole, minimising movement and thus reducing chafe. When we set up the pole today we left no
more than one inch of rope between the pole and the sail, but just enough for
it to saw back and forth all day under load, until the cover of the rope chafed
through to the dyneema core beneath.
The strength in a rope is in the core but without inspecting it more
closely it is impossible to tell whether the chafe has damaged the core. The
prospect of the genoa sheet breaking at night under two tons of load, leaving
the sail thrashing out of control, is too awful to contemplate so I decide to
drop the pole and remove the sheet so that we can cut off the chafed section
and tie a new bowline with undamaged rope.
Once the pole is stowed back on the mast, the next challenge
is to reach the clew of the genoa so that we can untie and make the repair. The
problem is that this part of the sail, even when furled on the forestay, is
about five metres above the deck and the only way to reach it is for me to
climb the forestay. We reduce sail
to stabilise the boat and I strap myself into the climbing harness and attach
the spinnaker halliard. Andrew then winches me up the
forestay and when I am in position I look down on the deck below. Fifteen feet
below me, the motion of the boat is more apparent and because I am up in the
air, the pendulum effect is far greater meaning that i
have to hang on to the forestay with one hand and tie the bowline with the
other, wrapping my legs around the forestay to keep me attached. I untie the
damaged sheet, recover it back to the cockpit and we can immediately see that
the core is undamaged. However before we can re-end the sheet we have to
‘milk’ the cover along the rope to ensure that the cover is evenly
applied along the length of the sheet. Using a hot knife we then cut the
damaged section off and I go up the forestay again and tie on a fresh knot to
the clew. The repair made, we
reset the genoa, ensuring that the knot is snug in the jaws of the pole and off
we go again, running downwind towards Columbia. The only real consequence of this
incident is that our evening sundowners are delayed and we sip our drinks as
the sun sets on an eventful day.
As I write this on my night shift, I see from the log that
at around midnight the wind was gusting up to 32 knots and Fatty put another
reef in the genoa. During Kerry’s watch a large tanker passed within a
mile of us so she had to alter course to give it a wide berth. We are now
crossing the shipping lanes so we have to keep a good look out as tankers,
cargo ships and cruise liners head north and south, down to Venezuela and up to
Panama and the USA. The wind occasionally gusts up to30 knots and even with two
reefs in the main and the genoa, the speedometer briefly touches 14 knots as we
charge through the night on our way southwest towards Santa Marta. Down below
it feels quite dramatic as the movement of the boat and the sound of the sea
rushing past is amplified through the hull. Sleeping isn’t easy in these
conditions as each wave that passes under the hull rolls us around in our bunks,
making for fitful sleep and wild dreams.
However up in the cockpit it is a glorious night with a half moon
illuminating the sea and lighting up our wake as we surf down the waves. I reef
the mainsail further to slow our speed a little.
With 230 miles to run, at our current rate of progress we
should be in Santa Marta by Wednesday morning, just in time for lunch.