Friday, March 20, 2015

Marquesas Passage Day 14

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run 125 miles.
You guys may think it is easy to turn out this blog each day on passage. Well it is hard to fit in all of the day's unique experiences in just a few short paragraphs. It kind of reminds of the Cheech and Chong sketch where they are at the first day of school after summer and the teacher asks them what they did on their summer vacation. One of them - I could never figure which was which - answers "I got up, went to the drugstore and looked for a job". When pushed for what he did on the others days the answer is "I got up, went to the drugstore and looked for a job".

After I did yesterday's morning blog Chris noticed that the boom vang wasn't vanging (the vang holds the main sail boom down). The shackle that holds the vang block and tackle to the mast base had failed. Metal fatigue -- it spilt in two. I replaced it with a soft-shackle that I made out of dyneema. These old-style rope shackles are pretty cool. Amazingly strong, easy to make and quiet.

We got visited briefly by a couple of porpoises. We are moving so slowly that they weren't interested in staying to play with the bow wake. Last night on my watch we had an unintentional jibe -- that's when the main boom flys over to the other side of the boat. No injuries -- no damage. The boom preventer clutch was not closed all the way -- this let the boom free when a wave it us a little sideways. I quickly set everything up on the other tack so it looked like to all those watching that I meant to jibe.

Looks like another slow day today. The GRIBs have the wind light and variable for the next forever.

Paul


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1 comment:

  1. Do you remember Dan's line (of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks)? "You probably think it's easy, being up here, singing and all. It's not, not easy. Thanks folks."
    Is that what you're saying about your blog?
    I think you and Dan have a few things in common, including Chris as the Hot Lickette!

    ReplyDelete