Disaster

A question to all the technicians/mechanics:

When do things/materials break or fall apart? Under load, or at the state of rest? Under load! Yes! But not so on Faule Haut.

I experienced strong winds for over three weeks now, almost every day on my cruise from Darwin, Australia to Bali, Indonesia. In those winds I hardly used the main sail, only the storm jib and sometimes as well a little piece of genoa. Winds were around 35 to 40 knots with the exception of one entire night, when it got up to over 60 nasty knots, when even the autopilot refused to do its work. On June 7th the wind calmed down to 25 knots and I got the main sail up as well. Next morning Faule Haut ran into a dead calm and got stuck in the doldrums. Wind from dead astern, 3 to 5 knots, that’s close to nothing. I left the sails up, making one knot of speed over ground but not because of the wind, but because of the current that went – luckily – the same direction as I wanted to sail.

On June 8th I was in the pantry standing at the stove, when suddenly I heard a strange crack and a washer fell through the open deck-light/window on my head. I got on deck to see what had happened and saw the boom disattached from the mast. A safety pin that secured a bolt which is supposed to hold the boom to the mast was gone. The bolt had slid out so that the boom had no connection to the mast anymore.

The bolt that fell out with a (new) locking pin.This happened in the doldrums, meaning no wind going. No load or force working on the mast. Had this happened a few days earlier when I was under full sails in those strong winds, “the sh!t would have hit the fan”.

Definitely – my lazy jack lines would have been torn off, both, starboard and port. They are not sized to support the load of the boom plus the main sail plus the force of the wind blowing into the open sail. And most likely the vang/boom kicker would have broken. Had this happened during the stormy night, when it was blowing over 60 knots, the main sail would also have been torn off the sliders that run up the mast leaving me with a torn off sail, unable to repair on the open sea. The boom would have bounced violently against the mast causing further damage. You would agree if you had seen the forces that were working on deck in 60 knots of wind, when you almost get blown off the deck.

So it seems, physical laws do not apply on Faule Haut but are suspended from time to time. On Faule Haut things don’t fall apart under load, but at rest, in order to protect the boat and her skipper!

Go ahead and draw your own conclusion!

(Exactly the same thing happened a few weeks ago with my old anchor, that broke apart while it was resting on deck on a tarpaulin and not on the seabed holding the boat (see story on www.faule-haut.de 2019-04).

(And – for Patrick: No! It was not the hobgoblin/Klabautermann that helped me! )

I don’t want to strain or wear out the word “miracle” again, but, please judge yourself what this was:

Being on the open sea on May 15th, I found a rusty bolt on deck at the stern of the boat. I was thinking where it came from, but I could not figure it out. I thought, someone must have thrown it on my boat at the last anchorage and I forgot about it.

Ever since I got the boat, I was thinking about replacing my old anchor because there is a new generation of anchors on the market with a new design which has been tested and compared to the commonly used predominating anchors on the majority of boats. YouTube videos show the advantage of these anchors over all the others. It’s called ROCNA. In Opua, New Zealand, all the boat equipment cost roughly 30 or 50 % less than in Germany. This was a good opportunity to buy the anchor I wanted to have so badly. So I bought that ROCNA, took off the old anchor and attached the new one on the chain. The old one I put on top of the tarpaulin that covered my spare sails on deck, close to the bow. I tied it up with ropes so that it wouldn’t move or fall off the deck.

This is what my anchor looked like when I found it in two pieces

When I got back from the “bio security dock” at Nouméa, New Caledonia, this morning, I sailed to a recommended anchorage and felt happy and safe when I dropped this new ROCNA anchor for the second time. When I went back on deck from my ground tackle to the cockpit I passed my old anchor and saw that is has virtually fallen apart. The anchor that I had tied with ropes on top of the tarpaulin as ONE piece two weeks ago, was resting there in TWO pieces. The shaft had come of the plough. A bolt, which was supposed to hold these two parts together, was gone. I was that rusty bolt that I had found a few days earlier at the stern. It must have fallen out during my cruise, while the anchor was resting on deck.

I have been using and trusting this anchor for more than 15 months, and was shocked to see it fallen apart. Imagine this – my anchor fell apart – resting on deck – not being used – not under load on the seabed. For sixteen months Faule Haut had been in danger to drift away from the anchorages and get blown against some rocks to crash or get blown away towards the open sea (when I was ashore).

A nightmare. Am I exaggerating when I say that I escaped a catastrophe here? I had to fall on my knees to send a bit THANK YOU to my friend up there.