maintenance Archives - OCEAN POSSE

WHEN THE HALYARD SKIES OFFSHORE...WHAT DO YOU DO?

On every passage there are sail changes and shifts that go smoothly or even better than expected...and then there are the surprises. Some surprises are more or less demanding than others. Our most recent surprise underway gave Captain Mike the opportunity to go up the mast in the middle of the ocean under clear blue skies over gentle 2 meter seas.

His thought was, "I'd rather see what it's like now under these conditions in case I have to consider going up the mast in anything else."

Here's what happened:

Last week, we sailed from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus. Conditions were excellent; we decided to go dead downwind and fly our Main and Jib wing and wing. We poled out the jib, adjusted our course, set the main, and put a preventer on it. The boat felt rock solid sliding down waves and sailing at 9-10 knots.

The wind slacked, we shook out the reef and sailed for maybe 5 more minutes before we heard a "floosh" sound and SURPRISE our mainsail lay a limp pile on the boom.

One moment we are sailing 10.6knots...the next we lost over half our sail area and over half our speed.

After minimal discussion, Mike went up the mast to retrieve the halyard. He used his ascenders on one of our spinnaker halyards and we backed it up with our second headsail halyard. At the second spreaders we swapped and he was raised the rest of the way on the headsail halyard and the spinnaker halyard was his backup. Now with all these halyards, where is the backup main halyard? THAT and a backup mizzen halyard are now on our list. Had we had a backup main halyard we could have waited to ascend the mast on anchor instead of underway. Hindsight is indeed 20:20!

NOTE: While the hull was rocking in 2 meter seas, the top of the mast was swaying maybe 20' or more from side to side. Good thing he loves a wild ride because at the top he had to hang on with all his might.

Once down with the skied halyard, we found that the shackle had opened, the main twisted out, and bent the shackle arms open. We fixed that, reattached the halyard to the sail, raised the main.

Mike's Take-away:

"It was about what I expected. The hardest thing was staying on the mast. I would definitely not want to go up in anything more than that without more in place to make it easier...like maybe some mast steps or a better climbing set-up."

SV WHIRLWIND Mike, Maurisa, Russell, & Josea - Alajuela 48

THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR ADVENTURES UNDERWAY

Send our editor your story to editor@oceanposse.com

by EDITOR

BOATWORK IN PARADISE: RE-SPLICING HALYARDS ON THE NORTH SIDE OF NUKU HIVA

RE-SPLICING HALYARDS ON THE NORTH SIDE OF NUKU HIVA

The offended halyard and splicing tools are all laid out and ready for action.

Following through after our June 9th article:

Chafe: Find It, Fix it, Get Ahead of it

(LINK????)

Cruising offers so many takes on life. Among them "Boatwork in beautiful places" rings true time and time again aboard SV WHIRLWIND. Granted this 'grind' is part of the fun of raising our sails, putting miles beneath our keel, watching dolphins surf our bow, sharing sundowners, and sailing for days and days to distant shores.

This week Captain Mike set about to re-splice the portside Spinnaker halyard that had chafed on our Pacific Crossing in May. Once we found the trades en route to French Polynesia we had the opportunity to fly the spinnaker for days on end before the conditions changed and a new sail was required. It was on one of these sail changes that we noticed that the head of the halyard had been chafing on something at the top of the mast. While the cover was shot, the core was fine and we had to put that halyard to rest until now.

(Side note: Redundancy to the rescue! Thankfully, when the conditions called for a spinnaker again, we were still able to raise ours as we have a starboard spinnaker halyard that carried us the rest of the way.)

Getting geared up to Re-splice the halyard where it was damaged, Mike took the opportunity to do a few upgrades that had been on his 'list for sometime'. We hadn't had a shackle in at the head of the line. We had been attaching the halyard with a bowline. Additionally, he put a new eye splice in the bitter end. See photos below for Re-splicing inspiration.

The cover to the spinnaker halyard chafed through. The inner core is still fine...phew!

A luggage tag on the bitter end for pulling up a new tag line to reeve a new halyard in the future.

Et VOILA! As they say in French. Splice is finished and halyard is snapped in place on the foredeck.

SY WHIRLWIND 🇺🇸 Maurisa, Mike, Russell & Josea – Alajuela 48’

by EDITOR

YACHT CARE: HURRICANE SEASON IN PORT IS A GREAT TIME FOR BRIGHTWORK

Last July, SV WHIRLWIND pulled into Vista Mar Marina in Panama and promptly began tackling some much needed boat maintenance. Cruising season was so full with the fun of sailing to new ports, dinghying up estuaries, snorkeling with colorful fish, hiking ashore, exploring coastlines, taking in the sunset, eating tacos, and making new friends. These activities and more regularly took precedence over certain (dare I say: more grueling) boat maintenance projects. During the 'off' season jobs like sanding and recoating the brightwork, re-plugging the teak decks finally got attention they were due. And when the projects were complete, the gruel was forgotten because the brightwork looked beautiful and the decks stopped leaking.

Brightwork inside and outside the cockpit

WHAT PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON IN PORT OR UNDERWAY?

Share your successes and your head scratchers, projects in port, on the hook, and quick fixes underway.

Send your pictures and stories to Maurisa at editor@panamaposse.com or share with the posse directly in the line ap.

Inspire one another.

While we may be spread across oceans and distant shores...we are not alone...and we are all on boats.
WHIRLWIND

by EDITOR