Well, we fixed all the things that needing fixing (except the autopilot) and then beat feet before something else could break. We still haven’t made it past 12 hours without something breaking, but we’re keeping up with the damage…barely…
We spent a bit of time shaking out things in So Cal and then hit a good weather window to go North up the California coast. We’re anchored in Half Moon Bay at present (20 miles S of San Francisco as we didn’t want to be in the Bay during the holiday weekend) The things that we’ve managed to break so far on our northward trek:
All the old leather lashings on the foot of the sail (all 15 of the new ones I installed held just fine, I guess I should have replaced all of them in the first place!).
Had a retaining pin on a snap shackle break apart but luckily it isn’t on anything important and we captured the pin/spring as it happened. New pin in place and all is good.
Blew out the clew on the #1 jib during some high winds. Had to go to the 80% Yankee style jib. The hanked on jibstay is 11 feet out there on a bowsprit and David forgot to attach the tricing line/downhaul to the Yankee while hanking it on so we had a very difficult time getting it down in 40 knots of wind a few hours later. Lucky us, after about 30 exciting minutes of dealing with it, we got it down without damage.
The bolt rope along the luff of the mainsail has a spot where it is coming unstitched from the sailcloth. Same with a spot along the foot of the mainsail. I’d already inspected the boltropes and re-stitched about 15 feet of it. Seems I need to re-stitch about 30 more feet. Long project.
With very high winds, both the staysail and the Yankee have excessive leech flutter. I’m not really sure if a leech cord would help or if broad seaming is needed. The staysail has battens and I suspect broad seaming is needed whereas the jib might make due with a leach cord, but I’m not an experienced enough sailor to know what’s right for this.
Other, “humm…so that’s interesting” things:
The prop wash on the rudder due to small aperture really sets up a vibration when pushing it hard while motorsailing.
When the foredeck is submerged (as it was every few minutes for about 10 hours of hard motorsailing in heavy seas going to windward) some water eventually seeps in around the seams between the raised deck and the cabin wall.
Waves breaking over midships can actually push a little water up under the combing around the butterfly deck hatches/deck lights. My stove got rained on.
We need winch handle holders at each mast rather than letting the winch handles get stuffed in among the lines to fend for themselves. It is only a miracle that we haven’t lost one yet.
Though everyone says that a gaff boom will always come down (benefit of having gaff-rigged sail), its not true. When winds are high and you’re trying to reef a gaff sail, that gaff boom just stays way up there even when the throat and peak halyards are loose and it should be falling like a rock.
A loose gaff topping lift WILL wrap itself around anything nearby and with amazing speed turn itself into a knot. Question–what to do with the gaff topping lift when it can’t be kept tight (i.e. when there’s very little wind and keeping it tight doesn’t help matters).
When you’re anchoring in 40 knots of wind, after you start backing down, you have to keep the boat in forward gear (not reverse) in order to back down at the right pace.
Cooking on a non-gimbled alcohol camp stove isn’t smart when the boat is rolling in heavy seas. Spagetti goes everywhere and does stick.
