Having a good time cruising into the oncoming twilight of another gorgeous tropical afternoon, all is right with the world and she feels great, setting up for a good night’s progress towards Manihi. Leaping on the port tack, his cutwater cutting effortlessly through the slightly turbulent but slippery water, he knows he’s making a good impression and, slightly irritated, he doesn’t have a gallery of onlookers to recognize his elegance. His crew appreciates the show, but recognition from others would do wonders for her self-esteem – she likes to show off just as much as the next ship! Pride always comes before a fall and without warning and certainly without any prior knowledge on your part or the crew, a thunderous crack breaks the calm of the night. His captain and his sister crew run up the gangplank to see the Anglo’s crew looking skyward at a lazily bobbing starboard midshroud. The upper spike of the spreader has broken, has fallen in the middle of a ring and is now falling to starboard.
Horrified, his crew stares at each other. Having heard and read many stories of yachts losing their rigs at sea, thousands of miles from the nearest shipyard, due to a failed rig, they are speechless for a few moments. The scene before their eyes spells disaster if they can’t come up with a solution quickly. She moves her head through the wind and toward the hove to position herself. She is very sorry but she doesn’t have time to worry about it now. Fortunately, the weather is mild, and her crew determines that as long as they remain on port tack, the rigging on the port side will be under considerable strain. The equatorial darkness is upon them now, so they secure the swinging end of the starboard lifelines and plan to prepare another shroud in the morning. After an immediate crisis, she returns to her course, cautiously picking up speed again without any apparent problem.
‘Ugh, that was complicated,’ he thinks. Maybe she’ll get out of this relatively lightly?
Head down and serious, she now wants to lose her mind over her earlier surge of vanity. Over an obligatory cup of coffee to calm their nerves, her shocked team discuss the problem. Firstly, Manihi Atoll, which is sparsely inhabited and therefore unlikely to be of any help, is removed from the itinerary. Its course alters towards the Rangiroa atoll, which has the largest population of the Tuamotus. Fishing is the main source of income for most of these atolls and that means there will be boats, ropes, cables, wires in abundance – sailors are the same all over the world! On their second drink and with their minds more settled in reasoned thought, the main implications of the problem seem to recede for the moment. Since all things equal, most of their sailing will be in port tacking all the way to Tahiti, where they know all things maritime are available. They are carrying a considerable length of wraith rope and tomorrow it will be converted into a replacement shroud. This Spectra line has an even lower stretch factor than Kevlar and if it can stretch enough over the spreaders and deck fittings it may be enough until they make landfall in Papeete.
When Mother Nature is in the frame, nothing is the same. She carries out her vocation at her discretion. Running a printout of the Weatherfax does not show any alteration in the weather pattern anywhere in the ocean they are sailing in, just constant SSE trade all the way through this sector. However, an hour after his mishap, a cloud covers the night sky, obscuring the stars. The rising wind recedes, bringing with it the rain, and our little boat is continually buffeted. Suddenly it’s like a squall, with winds up to thirty knots and it’s likely to come from any direction. Thirty minutes into these conditions, the steel captive ring breaks free and begins a pattern of wild arcs amidships. Its main target is the mainmast and every few seconds this 11mm diameter steel punch wants to embed itself in the aluminum spar. The spike originally attached to the end disappeared long ago into the sea with a loud hiss, leaving behind a deadly steel rod hell-bent on penetrating anything in its path. Aluminum, wood, or a skull wouldn’t make any difference, since they would all accept the flying projectile to a depth that depends on their own physical resistance.
Her mainsail had been released earlier at the start of the squall attack, and she is running only under genoa, so her sails are in no danger of damage. How to quickly secure this hectic missile and survive before it wreaks great havoc? With a deck now agitated, her skipper, wearing a life jacket and hooked to the jack line, rushes to port. The crew, shining the spotlight in the general direction through the rain, watch the glistening wet shroud flicker back and forth across the beam; they are grateful to still be in the cockpit. His captain, ducking and dodging at the same time, tries to catch him as he dives past.
By the time it reaches the end of its port arc, it’s too high anyway and out of range, so plan A won’t succeed. By now, he has already hit the mast many times, fortunately not always head on. The crew, seeing the black shape slumped in the port scupper, think it has either surrendered or been hit. He climbs back up, this time with the slack port halyard in hand and, after several misses, manages to grab the slack halyard tip, loop the line around the steel as many times as possible, pull it taut and secure it to a port eye. Job done, he straightens up and scuttles back into the cabin with a grin from ear to ear. No doubt he now thinks he is a hero, not realizing it was a fluke: the shroud caught the halyard on its way spinning wildly. However, the chance of any additional immediate damage being removed, she’s happy about, allowing you to enjoy the thirty seconds of fame from her. Tomorrow is another day, when the options will be examined, but for now they are waiting for comfortable berths. They are full, leaving the rest of the crew on watch to ponder what might have been.
Swinging gently from the top of her mast, her captain surveys the scene around her. A bright tropical morning, swept cool and crystal clear by the night rain, leaves a scintillating picture. Three hundred and sixty degrees of perfect, brilliant blue disk surrounds her, holding her permanently captive, in the dead center. Turning her head, she marvels at the outrageous expanse of it. Endless, like a woman’s love, the blue ocean seemingly stretches to infinity. The upper canopy is without blemishes, except for several harmless fluffy thunderclouds that dot the horizon in the southwest quadrant. Probably hovering over some distant point on Earth, but being so far away, she can’t be seen on the horizon. Otherwise a broad canvas of broad shades of blue, lightly brushed with bright highlights as the sun reflects off the tips of the waves in the light breeze. No camera, restricted as it is to a small window, will be able to capture the overall uplifting feeling of seeing and being a part of such a scene. Filled with a quiet joy to be alive, the captain of her turns her head back to the job at hand. At dawn, as she had this morning, on a beautiful calm day with only a light breeze at the stern, her captain had decided to go up to the mast to see what could be done with her errant shroud. He would also inspect the Miguels stamping on his forestay.
‘A waste of time even looking at that!’ she says, always matter-of-fact, ‘good or bad, what do you imagine she could do about it here?’
Human nature being what it is, there was no way it wasn’t going to be lifted to the extra height of the truck for inspection. Apart from anything else, that’s as high as he can get to her and he’s going there! Normally at sea, a trip up the mast would only be contemplated in an emergency. Five degrees of movement on the deck translates to a fifteen to twenty degree arc up here. It is imperative that the mast is firmly supported between the climber’s thighs to prevent swinging and hitting the mast. These young men who make a race round the world, rise in all weathers, no doubt the bravery of youth drives them. One gets a little more cautious with age.
Miguels’ engineering masterpiece is, of course, flawless, and he feels a surge of affection for the mustachioed man and the product of his trade. Three thousand five hundred nautical miles in his wake, working hard he will stand still. Drinking in the sight, lingering as long as possible without the crew on deck getting suspicious, distracted (it’s a twenty meter drop to the deck!) or just left up there, he calls the deck to lower him to the mid crosshead. Hooked to his belt is the wraith line, and in his bag a spare spike. Looking all along the rope to the deck, he is momentarily fascinated by the twisty turn he takes from near the mast to the sea. With his woven blue and white diamond pattern, he looks a lot like a very long, very lazy python, snaking all the way to its rear!
‘Come on,’ she controls him, ‘get on with the job!’
It’s relatively easy to double loop the Spectra cable through the spigot, hook it into the neck keyhole, and drop the two loose ends down to deck level to attach to the deck fitting. On the way down, check the leather covers on the end of the spreader for wear. Back on deck with several burns to the skin on her inner thigh, the results of which are deposited somewhere up and down the mast, the episode is shared over a beer. You can’t rush these jobs at sea!
Thoughts of lazy days on those far away, but ever closer, fabled islands of the South Sea, propelled them forward, and their Anglo-Saxon captain and crew prepared to lower the deck of the jury’s rigging as taut as their combined forces would carry. With no block and tackle system available to work in this situation, they will have to rely on sheer physical strength. This is quite considerable in the Anglo-Saxon crew, but their captain’s contribution will be somewhat insignificant in comparison. Being on the starboard side, the slack side, they are surprised at the degree of stress they are able to place on the beast. Even the tension with her twin intermediate shroud on the port side isn’t so much of a problem now, as having a rig in place that will keep the rig upright without breaking or collapsing. In fact, the product of their efforts admirably preserves this premise right down to the port of Papeete. Meanwhile, the arrival of a plate of steaming buns generously covered in blobs of rapidly melting, bright yellow butter in the middle of the operation, undoubtedly injects them with just enough hairy-chested momentum to drop that extra pound or two required.
‘Man!’ she thinks, ‘they’re so easy!’
The complete assembly, without too close inspection, appears to be in acceptably good condition. Still, she’s strong enough for fair to moderate weather, and her ingenious work is admired by her crew from their cockpit. Both she and her captain pray that the trade winds hold up to Tahiti.