Port Stanley, Malekula Island

Sunday 26th July 2009

No lobster turned up during the night.

Richard rips us out of bed, declaring there wind and that we are leaving after breakfast for Port Stanley, about 25nm north up the east coast of Malekula Island.

He hands over to Cath and I to get us sailing.  God.  We fumble around with the main for a bit and eventually get it up, fumble around with the plotter and evenutally get a route in, and after fumbling around with the Moksha Manual, even get a reef in!

Running down wind in 20 to 25 knots, gusting up to 30.  Boat speed 7 to 9.5 knots.  Short, choppy sea state.  Richard hands over helm to Gavin.  We put in a gybe to head inland.  Richard lets off boom-brake and the boom swings over faster than we expect, with a bit of a bang, but we think nothing of it.

We get inside Port Stanley and find the intended achorage not sheltered against the south-east wind, so potter around for a while and get another.  Locals paddle up with mobile phones to be charged.  They come on board and sit there watching us as we do our stuff.  Cath and I zip up the sail cover.  Then Cath: "oh my god!", pointing.  Richard comes to see, making some droll comment about me standing like an idiot with my mouth hanging open.

Then he sees the broken boom.

We all stand around gaping at it.  And the locals sit there gaping at us.  Unbelievable.

We deliberate over how it could have happened - maybe when the main sail back-winded, or maybe during the gybe...

Make tea and eat biscuits for our new friends and sit around glumly.  The girl plaits Cath's hair while Lu and Gav have a go in the dug-out canoe, heading into the mangroves to "find a new boom".  The locals invite us to eat laplap with them tomorrow.

Back in the saloon, we run through our options: sink Moksha, fix Moksha (with paddle pop sticks and expoxy!),
sail home sans main sail, etc.  We're really sad at the prospect of flying home early.  Hopefully we find a solution.

We decide against posting the blog before we've made a decision in case it worries our peeps at home.

 

We retire to our respective cabins and watch movies on our laptops.

Monday 27th July 2009


Our fearless leader barrels out of his cabin in a suprisingly good mood and launches straight into how we can fix this puppy.  After great thought and consideration, we girls head up onto deck to work on our tans and brazilian butts.

 

Three long lovely hours later, we pile into the tender (except for Gavin who is being a real man and taking the canoe) and go to Uri village for laplap.  Our hosts (the three that visited us yesterday) give us a tour.  Their village is orderly, clean and pretty, and has the most beautiful roosters.  They dress us in mission dresses, sprinkle talcum powder on our necks (??) and give us neck-lays made of little rolled-up leaves.  We drink kava which tastes like carrots and mud.  It makes us relax
and our throats cease up.  We eat inside a little hut - a feast of manioc (a root vegetable covered with island cabbage and coconut), oysters, little smoked fish, crabs, chicken, breadfruit and baked yam, all laid out on a carpet of palm leaf matts.  Interesting flavours and textures...Lu gets something going wrong in her tummy - probably from eating crab poo.

 

They show us a skeleton of a dugong and we go to take off the mission dresses, but apparently they are gifts.  Such lovely generous people. We pay them though, and also for the laplap.

Jam back into the tender in our dresses and laugh and squeal as we bounce along in the moonlight, getting totally soaked...rotten Richard!!

Regarding our boom situation, Richard emails the following to the next crew:

Hi Crew

Unfortunately, yesterday we creased our new boom on Moksha.  We are not 100% sure exactly how it happened but in 3 hours of sailing we undertook only one gybe and half a dozen tacks, so it appears to be the result of the gybe.  We were sailing downwind in 25 knots of wind gusting to 30 knots in calm seas.

We undertook a planned gybe using the boom brake and even though the boom brake worked slowing the boom movement across the boat, the boom when it came to a stop, due to the mainsheet, must have been travelling faster than it could cope with and creased at the same place as the boom we previously broke.  We did not notice the crease until we anchored later in the day.

After much heartache about what to do and options open to go forward we decided to ring (and later emailed them with pictures) Hall spars in New Zealand.  They were very helpful and gave precise details of how we could fix it either using flat 5 or 6mm aluminium plates (bent so it fits the shaped on the boom) on the four sides of the boom riveted in placed as well
as epoxied for a distance of 800 to 1,200mm depending on the exact way we go about it.  We could use two thicknesses of the good sections of the previously broken boom for the sides as it may fit better.  We could affix the main sheet to the boom using a strop instead of the stainless steel tang.  This strop attachment is a superior way of the attaching the main as
it spreads the loads over a larger area instead of just one point.  The word from hall spars is this will be stronger than the boom was but would not be pretty.

We can source all the materials in Port Villa and the work is likely to take a few days.  We would need to remove the boom to do the best job.  Currently we are 130nm north west of Port Villa.  We plan to sail back to Port Villa using the headsails including gennakers and the trysail over the next 3 or 4 days stopping a couple of times where hopefully we will get favourable beam to aft of beam winds.  If we get the prevailing winds it will be uphill to sail back.

Once in Port Villa I will make the final decision of what to do.  Basically we have two options.

1. In Port Villa, temporarily fix the boom, meeting you in Port Villa on the date we were planned to meet in Sola and then sail home.  Once home we would source a stronger and improved boom setup. This is not anticipated to delay the return date to Australia.

2. Leave the boat in Port Villa, fly back to Australia and arrange for a stronger and improved boom setup to be made and sent back to Port Villa for fitting and then sail home. It will take between 6 to 8 weeks to get a new better boom and 2 to 3 weeks to get it to Vanuatu and fitted.  So if we take this option it is possible that the return trip to Australia is significantly delayed.  I am very sorry if this eventuates and realise that some of you may not be able to make it for this later date. I would reimburse you for any costs incurred.

If you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to email me.

Apart from this little mishap we have been having a fantastic time. See blog for updates.

Regards Richard Rowe

PS.  Some more information we have found out about the boom setup on Hanse's:

a. It appears that Sparcraft also make an ocean quality stronger boom for a Hanse 540 that we have just learned about.  Moksha does not have this boom.

b. Considering we have only used the boom that has recently been fitted to Moksha for less than 3 weeks and have done probably less than 10 controlled gybes mostly in light winds we feel the boom is weaker than we need for the style of sailing we normally do on Moksha (i.e. we are not totally conservative sailors and like to keep the boat moving well).

c. A number of Hanse's have broken or creased booms.

d. Using a boom brake with full main to gybe puts more load on a Hanse 540 boom than it can cope with when winds are above 20 knots.

e. Mid sheeted booms with tangs to connect the mainsheet to the boom can be problematic due to the loads involved being taken at one point on a now reinforced section of the boom.

Love from Moksha