Marquesas Passage Day 15

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 116 miles. I woke this morning to the sounds of sails coming in and sails going out, then sails coming in again and sails going out again. We were in the middle of a few rain squalls and the winds were clocking around in every direction. Our boat speed was 0.0 to 7.0 kts. Right now its 1.2kts. Looks like we'll be in these rain showers for awhile.
Since our little incident with the rudder I've been checking the steering gear twice a day. Yesterday I looked at it and it seemed like the rudder arm might have a tiny bit of movement in it. So we heaved-to tightened up the four rudder arm bolts. They came in a little bit. Then I decided to check the main rudder bolt. The head is on the backside and I could feel that it was snugged in all the way to the rudder arm casing, as it should be and was at least more than hand tight. I put a wrench on the nut for this bolt. It just spun freely. The rudder bolt has sheared inside the rudder post. Not a good thing. At this point all I can do is make sure that the bolt doesn't work its way out. In my best race car driver mechanic imitation, I used duck tape to hold the loose part of the bolt in. We will probably now haul in Papeete to replace the bolt. That's still another 1,400 miles or so from here.

471 miles to go to the Marquesas.



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