Vendée Globe Update:
Thursday, December 9, 2004
Position 43 20S, 30 02E, @ 17:40 UT
Ups
and Downs
It's been a busy day
(do I say that a lot?) here on our southern ocean surfboard. The
small high pressure zone rolled over us late last night and this
morning giving us several hours of light air, but thankfully not
much slatting.
The light air continued
long enough today to allow me to attend to various tasks. I slightly
modified and remounted the mainsheet bag in the vestibule which
the "big wave" from about a week ago had ripped off. The
vestibule dodger was also repairable, aside from a couple of small
rips that do not matter too much. I sealed around the backup autopilot
control head which had been leaking, and spent a lot of time messing
with the autopilots.
The primary pilot went
haywire again, so my previous fix which was hooking up the suspect
control head directly to the pilot servo (brain) instead of going
through the instrument server that is hook to the pilot servo. That
probably doesn't make much sense to many of you, but the bottom
line is that it worked for several days but gave up again. So I
tried it with and without the suspect control head and confirmed
that it is indeed goofed up. So, the primary pilot is working fine
now, and I have set it up slightly different with the compasses
hooked to it...but I won't bore you with the details there!
Water has been leaking
into the aft compartment from both the rudder deck bearing and the
lower bearing gasket boot. I did some sealing on the deck bearing
and hopefully that helped, but I will know more after the next heavy
weather dousing (coming tonight?).
The
toughest repair issue is the lower bearing boot on the rudder shaft.
Although my previous repair seems to be holding fine, the boot has
a couple of other spots that have fatigued and have started to leak.
This boot has a tough job, as when we are surfing fast air it tries
to suck out the lower bearing which is sealed by the boot. So the
boot gets sucked downwards towards the bearing like it's being vacuum
bagged. Then at lower speeds the boot fills with water like a balloon
and has to keep it from coming in. This is worse at lower speeds
with the ballast tank full (upwind and reaching) since the boat
floats lower when "tanked up."
Anyway, today it was
too wet from water leaking in to use the neoprene glue, so for one
of the bad spots I made another patch of neoprene but glued it on
with a sealant that likes water better. In order to hold this patch
and another leak, I had to wrap a lot of tape around the boot to
hold things in place. This will limit the movement which won't matter
in normal steering, but if I tack or jibe I must be careful not
to put the rudder hard over. Every couple of hours I go and check
and miraculously the affair seems to be holding for now. This is
as good as I can get until we can be in smooth water and going slow
so I can dry everything out and do a better job.
Yesterday I did another
interview with the Vendée press center. They caught me right
after I watched the classic goofy movie (on DVD) of "Rock &
Roll High School" from 1979 with the Ramones. The DVD and great
rough rock of the Ramones had me in a much better mood then from
the night before where I was frantic with worry about the pilots,
etc. So with my mood up, I rambled on with long replies that must
have had them wondering if I'd opened my Cape Horn wine early.....;-)
I need a nap now....I'm
rambling on here too!
Bruce Schwab, Skipper
USA 05/Ocean Planet
Web: www.bruceschwab.com
Education: www.oceanplanet.org
Email: bruce@bruceschwab.com
Phone: 843-670-6582
This American team for the Vendee Globe is made possible by your
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and our supplier sponsors:
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Equiplite lightweight connectors: www.equiplite.com
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MAS Epoxies: www.masepoxies.com
Nobeltec navigation software: www.nobeltec.com
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