Action stations, again! (part 8)

Saturday June 11th

After a few days of mostly grey skies the sun came back today. We sailed on an odd course, just south of east and some way off our course to Rapa, because… as we were motoring north east towards Rapa earlier this morning, an alarm sounded on the port engine. Oil pressure had dropped to zero, and happily Chris got the engine off in just a few seconds. He then spent about 4 hours with Niko’s help trying to figure out what the problem might have been, but eventually decided to sleep on it and tackle it again in the morning. Meanwhile we sailed on, somewhat off course through the south pacific ocean.

I’d been hearing the sound of gently scratching fiddle music in the creaking and groaning of the boat’s rigging, and today I isolated it to where the mast and the boom join together. The guys thought it was quite funny, and perhaps a first sign of some ocean madness on my part, but to me it sounded very mellow and melodious, quite like some of Caomhín Ó’Rahailligh’s harbinger fiddle stuff:

I’ve tried to reproduce the sound in Garageband without much luck! It doesn’t do ‘hardanger’ or ‘boat rigging’ sounds.

Later in the evening myself and Niko spotted a pod of three dolphins swimming around the boat. They only did one circuit, but in that time Chris shouted to get the fishing line in… and it did seem like that is what the were interested in. Once that was hauled in — no, no fish caught — they disappeared and we didn’t see them again. A flash of excitement and they were gone.

I was hoping for a quiet night shift tonight, but… as Chris was signing off to go to sleep, he noticed that a baton had slipped it’s connection with the mast, and the main sail was flapping around a bit in the breeze. I helped him lower the main and he reattached it, all good, but, a couple of minutes later, as I was coiling up some untidy lines on the deck, the main halyard (the line that holds the top of the main sail) snapped at the top and the main sail dropped to the deck beside me with a loud whirring noise. We rehauled the main sail up on a spare halyard easily enough (the boat is well set up with many redundant features and systems), but I found myself serving out the rest of my watch hoping that nothing else would go wrong on board. This was the most tiring aspect of the voyage so far I think, this burning of nervous energy about things going wrong that I don’t fully understand.

Sunday June 12th

Seems like the remainder of last night’s watches went quietly, and most of my shift this morning was a fairly unremarkable dawn watch. With half and hour to go Joe got up and started preparing to go up the main mast to repair the problem that occurred last night. Niko got called out of bed too, as all four of us were needed for this. One person hauled Joe up the mast on a halyard, another held him on a safety line, while I helmed the boat and kept general watch. My phone chose this moment to go on the blink, and I couldn’t video Joe up the mast, which was a shame… it was a fantastic piece of work he did, it went very smoothly — from my perspective down on the deck at least — and he was just finishing off when…

…a small metal shackle holding the bottom of the big reacher sail to the front of the boat snapped, and the reacher flapped off to the starboard side of the boat and waved around furiously in the wind. It was still attached to the top of the mast though, and after a few minutes struggling with it myself and Niko got it under control and hauled it back down onto the deck. Meanwhile Joe just hung out at the top of the mast, getting some good GoPro video in the process [VIDEO coming soon].Then we were all back onto finishing the work on the main mast, and not too many minutes later Joe was back down on the deck with us again.

My nerves were really jangling at this point. Nothing like a few even minor incidents like this to remind you how vulnerable you are out in the middle of the ocean, miles away from anyone else or any kind of help. At this point I did get rattled and was thinking ‘what is going to break next?’… which was in large part due to my own lack of experience out at sea, and also not knowing the boat very well. Chris, on the other hand, was unflappable though all of this excitement, as he knows the boat well and was confident in his ability to fix everything that had happened so far. Later on over a very welcome rasher sandwich lunch, he explained that it was not unusual for lines and clasps to break in the early stages of long voyages, as that is normally the first time since a boats last long voyage that things have been stressed and strained for long periods of time (most non-bluewater voyages happen in shorter day or weekend sailing trips). Good to know for the next time.

No real soundtrack for the day, but the phrase “all hands on deck” rang in my mind for the various bits of fixing work we had to do.

In other news, I noticed something really odd about the waves today, which Joe noticed separately and we were able to confirm for each other when we got chatting in the evening. The wind changed yesterday from a Southeasterly to a Northwesterly. The long lazy waves we have been getting from the south have continued, but, at the same time today’s wind is creating small, short frequency waves coming from the north.. I have never seen two different patterns of waves running across the ocean at the same time… until today. Neat.

Monday June 13th

On course to arrive in Rapa sometime later this week. Winds are light to fair today and tomorrow, then we’ll likely be becalmed on Wednesday for a while, and then light winds after that should get us there by the end of the week. Unless something changes… with the weather you never really know for sure.

There was a good atmosphere on board today, the sun was out, we had lovely sailing conditions with small waves, nice light wind and we were cruising along at 7 or 8 knots, just lovely!

The voyage to Rapa Iti

• Part 1 — Introduction
• Part 2 — Auckland to Tauranga shakedown trip
• Part 3 — Leaving New Zealand
• Part 4 — Trying to get into the swing of things
• Part 5 — Action stations!
• Part 6 — Now we’re sailing
• Part 7 — A very happy birthday
• Part 8 — Action stations again!
• Part 9 — Whales
• Part 10 — A day with a bit of everything in it
• Part 11 — The sky is on fire
• Part 12 — Almost there
• Part 13 — Land ho!