Just a spectacular day on the water yesterday. Sunny and cool, steady wind out of the east and about ten snowbirds anchored in Craford Bay with many more passing by on their way south. Boats of all sizes, single-handers and some couples bound for anywhere from North Carolina to Florida and the Bahamas. Lots of friendly waves and greetings. Fall sailing at its best.
SPARTINA did have a hardware failure. The shaft on the port shroud turnbuckle snapped in a gust. I heard a "pop," saw a line go flying and watched the mast bend to starboard. The mast bent severely, but did not break, a testament to the value of birds mouth construction. I eased the mainsheet, sailed into Craford Bay and anchored. After checking out the mast I used a spare piece of dyneema to tie the shroud to the tang, raised sail and spent about three more hours on the water.
It was a clear reminder that SPARTINA has had about 12 seasons of, at times, hard sailing. It is time, past time really, to check on boat hardware that has not been replaced over the years. I'll be doing that this week.
Hello Steve, nice pictures, thank you for keeping us updated with your inspiring sailing. Not much sailing on my part, travelling for work, finishing up house works for planning permission compliance verification.... lots of unfortunate excuses keeping me away from the water... what a shame!
ReplyDeleteLet's hope to turn that around soon,
Lorenzo
Steve, I see in the pictures from your recent trip the boat has closed tubular style turnbuckles. I have been told those are notorious for failure because they are hard to flush clean and collect dirt and salt over the years. Recommend you spring a few extra bucks for open turnbuckles as you replace them.
ReplyDeleteShawn
Solomons, MD
That's a good point, Shawn, might look into that. At the very least I'll go with a slightly larger size. Thanks for the thought
ReplyDeletesteve