In keeping with the “little thing” theme of yesterday’s post, we had a “little thing” fail last night aboard Pandora.<\/p>\n
In this case, it was the fitting that holds the luff tack cringle of the mainsail to the goose neck on the bow end of the boom.\u00a0 \u00a0This fitting was a loop with a pin that went through the bottom front “corner” of the mainsail luff.\u00a0 In spite of the fact that this fitting was, and I say “was” deliberately, designed to take the load of the luff for the entire mainsail, it broke off.\u00a0 The boom outhaul, with as much as 2,000 lbs of pressure on it as well as the head of the sail both pull against this fitting with great tension.\u00a0 It’s a very critical fitting.<\/p>\n
About\u00a000:00<\/span><\/span>\u00a0hours (midnight<\/span><\/span>), Jim came down below to wake me as the fitting had failed.<\/p>\n Fortunately, it was very light wind and we were motoring, more or less, directly into the wind.\u00a0 \u00a0When this fitting failed, the bottom of the sail became slack and suddenly much of the tension of the rest of the mainsail was focused on the first sail slide about 4′ up the luff of the sail. This slide and that part of the sail are not designed to take any major loads so had we been sailing in a strong breeze, I expect that the sail would have ripped its’ entire length beginning at that point.<\/p>\n Fortunately, due to Jim’s attention and quick action, a major failure was averted.\u00a0 \u00a0 With nearly 1,000 miles to go until we reach Antigua, losing the main would have ruined our day and many more after, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n While we expect to reach an area where we can sail in a few days, for now we are motoring and that would have put us at risk of running out of fuel before reaching Antigua without a working mainsail to move us along.<\/p>\n So, what was the solution?\u00a0 Fortunately, I keep a good supply of Dyneema line for just this sort of problem and was able to put together a bridle to hold the tack of the sail to the boom and mast.\u00a0 This line is super strong.\u00a0 \u00a0I doubled each piece with several wraps through the mainsail cringle, just in case the line chafes.\u00a0 However, Dyneema is really tough stuff and quite chafe resistant, so I doubt that we will have any major chafe issues.<\/p>\n I guess it took about an hour for me and Jim, with Chris at the wheel, just in case, to get everything tied securely into place.\u00a0 Thanks to Jim for his quick action as it likely saved the main.<\/p>\n So, today we are motorsailing ESE, close hauled, with the expectation that the wind will shift north of east at some point in the next day or so.\u00a0 While it is expected to remain light, around 10-12kts, we may be able to sail with the big Code O headsail once the wind shifts north, as its’ forecast to do.\u00a0 Eventually, perhaps late\u00a0Tuesday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0or\u00a0Wednesday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0we should find the easterly trade winds and then be able to sail the rest of the way to Antigua.<\/p>\n I still expect t to arrive in Antigua around the 12th, perhaps one of the first boats in the fleet to do so.\u00a0 \u00a0With Brenda flying in on the 15th, that will give me time to see Jim and Chris off and get Pandora into cruising mode.\u00a0 Of course, that also will involve getting that broken tack fitting repaired.\u00a0 \u00a0More to come on that, with photos, when I get to Antigua.<\/p>\n Fortunately, so far, this has been the only, potentially major, failure.\u00a0 \u00a0In the “minor failure” category, my masthead tricolor running light stopped working so now I only have the deck level running lights which I usually reserve for when I am running under power.\u00a0 \u00a0No biggie but I’ll want to get that fixed as well.\u00a0 It’s probably corrosion in the fixture at the top of the mast as it’s an LED bulb and those rarely fail.<\/p>\n In the “I don’t want to run out of fuel” department, I made a decision to continue on my middle fuel tank until it ran dry and the engine stopped to confirm exactly how much usable fuel it contained.\u00a0 \u00a0Well, this morning, after 61 hours of running time, the engine abruptly died.\u00a0 At an assumed average consumption of about .65\/hr fuel burn at low RPM, this suggests that I actually have 40 usable gallons in what is reported to be a 50 gallon tank.\u00a0 That’s few gallons less than I had expected and it will be interesting to see how much fuel that tank takes when I fill up in Antigua.\u00a0 Based on that I will be better able to estimate my maximum run time going forward.\u00a0 That will be good to know when I am calculating fuel consumption for especially long periods of motoring, like on this trip.<\/p>\n So, here we are, motoring along in very light winds with the hope that the wind will fill in a bit and back more to the NE so we can sail sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n I guess that’s all for now and in the meantime, let’s hope that nothing else “little” comes up and if it does, I sure hope that it, like last nights’ breakage indeed stays a “little something”.<\/p>\n Oh yeah, I saut\u00e9ed the last of the Mahi Mahi for dinner last evening along with some yellow squash.\u00a0 Both were great and flavored with Old Bay seasoning, the fish got rave reviews from Pandora’s entire crew.<\/p>\n Perhaps it’s time to fish again.\u00a0 Hmm\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In keeping with the “little thing” theme of yesterday’s post, we had a “little thing” fail last night aboard Pandora. In this case, it was the fitting that holds the luff tack cringle of the mainsail to the goose neck on the bow end of the boom.\u00a0 \u00a0This fitting was a loop with a pin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7887,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7886\/revisions\/7887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}