Day 16 - Equatorial Easter
To celebrate Easter, Carolyne and I made homemade English muffins the day before in preparation for an Eggs Benedict brunch. The canned ham we were saving was a perfect substitute for Canadian bacon and the homemade hollandaise sauce turned out thick and creamy-yellow and scrumptious! We topped our creations with paprika and black olives and placed sliced grapefruit and avocado to the side. Carolyne and I were pretty dang impressed with ourselves. The only disappointment... the eggs (even though we refrigerated these particular ones so they would be gelatinous and therefore easier to flip over-easy) broke after cracking... every single one. So we had no choice but to scramble them.
(NOTE: I forgot to list lemons a few days ago... we stored them in the veggie trays but just 10 days later 2 or 3 turned nasty green with mold. I bathed them in soapy bleach water and moved them to the refrigerator. The juice from 1 made a sinfully good hollandaise sauce. And I think lemon bars might be in the near future.)
In the afternoon, we laid the spinnaker on deck to dry. Turns out that the halyard had chafed completely through... right below the shackle after just 4 hours of being hoisted. Once at anchorage in Hiva Oa we'll have to run a messenger line to retrieve the halyard – which is now somewhere inside the mast – then check to see what the heck is chafing it through so we can keep that from happening again. Unfortunately, we won't be able to use the spinnaker until we arrive in the Marquesas and resolve this issue. And we only have that one chute.
Crossing the Equator and graduating from "polliwog" to "shellback" was a stellar event. We all dressed up and Carolyne played the part of King Neptune. Even Jim let Carolyne paint his face and he video taped the festivities. We celebrated with crackers and brie, chocolates, ice cream and champagne. Conditions were way to windy and choppy to swim across -but that was only a wee bit disappointing as we happily accept any and all wind at this point in time. With less than 1/3 of the way to go, we are very eager to get a move on!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
From Wandering TOCK's FB Page:
ReplyDeleteMike Blecher By the way, you guys know that Hotspur is 2/3 way across the Pacific right now, en route Mex to Hiva Oa? So far, all is reported ok aboard except for the Spinnaker halyard chafing through.
Ricardo Ramirez Sr. Yes they are now Shellbacks! They blogged that they lost the halyard line inside mast so no chute the rest of the way till they anchor. I'm curious about that since I have two halyards running through the head of the mast but not down the inside of the mast. My Spinnaker halyard is mounted out side to the front port of the mast. I could easily get up there to replace the truck and restring the line.
Mike Blecher Yea, mine is the same as yours. When I read their blog post, I had this idea that they may have been flying the chute from a headsail halyard, which are rigged over a sheave, then down, inside the mast. And, they are definitely not suitable to fly a chute from, because there isn't enough "play" in the sheave lead. If that was the case, then that would account for the halyard chafing. The block needs to be mounted on a bail on the top, outside the head of the mast, like yours is.
Ricardo Ramirez Sr. I'm still curious about that line in the mast since mine all go in the top front then out the back a little lower since the head is angled but none go down through the mast?
Mike Blecher I have some internal halyards on mine, but they are just the two genoa halyards and the main. The two chute halyards are rigged on the bail, with a free moving block. The internals are on sheaves. As I think about it, I'd bet that's what happened to Meri and Jim.
Ricardo Ramirez Sr. Well I'll post this to their blog and see if they come back with a reply I think someone is emailing them the comments since they can only post via sailmail not actually read the blog comments but then again they might be getting the comments emailed to them automatically via sailmail.