Day 2 - Crawling into tight spaces to carry out repairs
Hi everyone,
I’m writing this spending my first hours in the cockpit watching the waves listening to my favorite band, Odesza. Up until this point I have found the cabin to be more comfortable, a safe space, a non-threatening place. The cockpit regardless of whether we have the walls up always feels a bit exposed, open, free. There is a time for that experience but I find when I’m just getting going safety is the best.
Last night while cooking dinner I heard the sound of a wave smacking the size of the boat… with that sound I knew something was coming in the cockpit. This happened a lot to us in our last Atlantic crossing and we learned to keep the companionway hatch closed.
This was the case last night, the top was closed but the doors were not… as I was pulling the hot food out of the oven I heard a crash, I held on… trying not to burn myself on the oven and I looked behind me as a wall of water came into the cabin of the boat. Fuck…
I put the food back in the oven and went into damage assessment mode with my first goal to clean up all that saltwater. Lucky none of it hit critical systems, like the electrics box. I also noticed last night water got into the garage where the watermaker and tools are. So I told myself today I would clean that up.
After a bit of a wild night with the waves and gusts, I woke up and started cleaning the garage… during this I started to hear loud popping sounds coming from the area where the autopilot is.
To me, on Polar Seal, the autopilot is the most critical piece of equipment. Besides a hull breach, nothing could compare to the impact of that thing failing on me. Even the rig falling down still gives me options to go to sleep for a few hours while the boat carries on.
After inspection, I was having a hard time determining if the drive unit was causing the sound or the wood and bonding of the shelf it sits on. As I have strong waves and swell coming through this week I elected to swap out the unit for a backup I have.
To do this I needed to prep the boat, remove everything from the locker safely and figure out how the hell to heave to the boat, something Sophie and I have only done a few times. To make it more difficult to heave too, I have a backup forestay in place and a whisker pole… meaning if I wanted to do this properly I would have to spend an hour removing all that.
In the end, I elected just to roll in the headsail and use a deep reefed main… and it worked! I was so stoked, very honestly the whole operation scared the shit out of me. I need to turn the boat through the wind, then let the boat settle and reverse the rudder and lock it off. Then I had to crawl through a space no wider than my hips and change the drive, which took about 20min. My main concern was that the boat would work itself out of its drifting position, we would get hit by a massive wave and one of my toolboxes would fall on my legs. That would be a bad day.
After I got the new unit in I tested and it all worked fine… but the popping noise was still there so I’m thinking it’s the shelf it’s on and is something I’ll need to sort that when we’re in port.
For me, the good news is I can heave too and work on equipment… this gives me a lot of encouragement and confidence as I move further into the middle of the Atlantic.
If you have been watching my course you’ll notice my speed has slowed a bit… after this autopilot refit, I was destroyed and elected to give myself a calm day as this weekend will be anything but. Winds are expected to pick up tonight and through Sunday mid-day, as is the swell.
Through the 1300 plus solo miles I have put on the last weeks I can say I have learned a ton about sailing and myself. I really look forward to what the remaining 1900 miles have in store.
Ryan On Polar Seal