September 25, 2011-Sunday Racing

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Racing in African Waters

I called for the genoa, the “red bag”, and as it came on deck I went forward to help Andy hook it up.

When I called back to Judy, in the cockpit, to relead the sheets she demurred, “That’s the wrong sail.” She said.

I looked up from my work on the bow and saw she was right. In the few moments since I’d gone forward the wind had built. It had been 10 knots, now it looked like 15.

“What’s it blowing?” I shouted.

Judy glanced at the instruments and said, “16 knots, it’ll be more outside!”

We’ve had these conversations before and Judy is usually right, more often than I am, about which sail to set.

“OK, get the blue bag up here.” I shouted to the forward hands, and in a second the #4 jib came up. Andy rigged it and I went aft to line up for the start.

We reached back and forth a couple of times to get a sense of the line and set our clocks to the radio call: “Five minutes…NOW!” I decided on a port start at the left end, not the bold move that it usually would have been because for this race, being a reaching start, port was the only way to go.

We tacked, with speed, to leeward of Galactica, and went for the pin end.

“Three, two, one, START”. We were first to cross and we headed out of Richards Bay towards the anchored ships offshore, which we were sailing around today, leading the fleet and pulling out fast.

So, a good start, a good head of steam, and we had the right sail, for which I am eternally thankful. We just shouldered down and charged out to sea ducking the spray and looking for the first mark, a ship named “Sanko” five miles out, should be bearing 126 degrees.

We could see the ship’s masts and we homed in on it. Nomad, the 56 foot catamaran, overtook us on the way, her crew cockily demonstrating to us how their beer bottles could sit calmly on their cockpit coamings while we were heeled at 25 degrees and there was nothing calm about our ride and no beer drinking either. But we got the last laugh on Nomad. They were a bit shorthanded being only two aboard, and no navigator; they headed off to the wrong next mark. On Wings we had the next mark already entered on our plotter and Judy gave me the course: 250 degrees. We turned to that heading and saw another ship anchored three miles away. That must be it. Nomad, by this time, was nearly hull down, heading off on a course of 150, towards oblivion we figured, or Durban.

But with only three miles to go we had too little time to get the kite up, and anyway in 24 knots of wind we were already doing 9 knots and didn’t need it, plus, with the additional boost from the Alguhas current that flows southward around here at 1.5 knots, Banzai, the next mark, was coming up fast.

We jibed, rounded, put in a reef, and headed towards home, with Nomad nowhere in sight and the rest of the fleet following us a long ways back.

The last leg, like the first, was a close reach. We would have preferred a beat, but you take what you can get, and we sailed fast back towards Richards Bay and finished first by about two miles over Silhouette, the next boat, at 2 hours and 18 minutes for the whole course. We celebrated with cold beers, just like the old days.

At the awards party we found that going fast on the first outing doesn’t pay; they gave us a brutal rating and we corrected out to third. Silhouette won, 39 seconds ahead of Galactica and 14 minutes ahead of us on corrected time. But it was OK. We had fun, sailed well, didn’t break anything, and we made those other guys happy for beating us. Plus, we got a lot of favorable comments on how well Wings looked and sailed. All in all, a great day.

Wednesday we depart Richards Bay for the next port and the next adventure.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Richards Bay, SA

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September 6, 2011-This Morning the Fog Rolled In

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Wings in the Zululand Fog

This morning I woke to find that for the first time since we’ve been in Africa a heavy fog had rolled into Zululand.

The air was still and damp and thick with the fog and the boats in the marina and the trees ashore were just grey silhouettes.

It reminded me of Seattle or the California or Oregon coasts and it felt like home.

I loved it.

I filled a cup with hot Zanzibar and grabbed the Nikon and went out for a walk in the fog.

The boatyard was silent, the guard asleep, and even the birds had their heads tucked under their wings. My feet crunched in the pine needles but otherwise there wasn’t a sound.

I didn’t find a lot to shoot but I enjoyed my little walkabout. I got back to Wings and Judy was still snug in her bed. I made another pot of coffee.

At 11:00 AM the sun burned off the fog and then the day was still and warm.

By mid afternoon a sea breeze came up and the flags were flying.

We haven’t had weather here like this before.

Africa continues to surprise us.

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Richards Bay, South Africa

June 25, 2011-Update: Mast is finished

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Refinished and re-assembled

We have had a few really nice days just doing mast work under the coconut trees on the yacht club lawn. We have a work table set up and we have all of our tools handy and the work is going smoothly. It is warm and quiet and very satisfying to work here each day.

We have now completed all the work on the mast and it is ready to go back into the boat. All we have to do is get the boat ready for the mast; the keel bolt backing plates (those which live under the mast) need to be replaced. We've taken one out and have had a new plate made. There are two more which we will do as soon as the first one is back in. It makes sense to do these even though they don't need it yet because they are showing some deterioration and probably will need replacing in the next few years. We'd have to pull the rig again to do them then. Might as well do them now.

"Cruising: doing boat work in exotic places"

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Richard's Bay, South Africa

June 22, 2011-Painting the Mast

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Judy Sanding

We previously painted Wings’ mast eighteen years ago at Seaview East Boatyard in Seattle. We sanded it four times back then; once at the beginning and then, due to our poor painting skills, three more times as the Sterling LPU paint had to be sanded off and reapplied to get a smooth finish. Now, in Zululand Yacht Club, in South Africa, we are back at work on the mast sanding and painting.

It seems like the old days: here we are sanding the mast again, and, again, we have to re-sand the finish coat to get it smooth.

This time we blame the weather. Right in the middle of the final spraying the wind came up and made the spraying quite difficult. Andrew, our painter, did the best he could but the finish was not perfect.

We’ve decided to hand sand it smooth, using 1000 and 1500 grit wet and dry paper, and then to polish it with fine cutting past.

We don’t mind this, we’ve done it before.

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Other mast work in progress:

Patrick described the work we have to do as similar to “an aircraft maintenance check, dismantling, cleaning, inspection, appraisal, replacement, painting and reassembling”.

We agree with him and we are well underway following that pattern; now we are doing the replacements and painting. In addition to painting we have:

-All corrosion has been sanded, brushed, and acid cleaned
-The mast head sheave guard has been re-welded.
-The boom has had some welding to fix cracks where it attaches to the gooseneck
-New bearings for the mast-head sheaves have arrived and will be installed today.
-New windex and mast head light have been received and are ready for installation.
-Most of the fasteners have been replaced
-The rigging screws have been cleaned, polished, and re-lubricated
-The mast step has been removed and will be rebuilt due to corrosion found on the underside.
-A new hydraulic boom vang has been ordered.

And (unrelated) one of the keel backing plates (the one under the mast step) has been removed and a replacement is being fabricated.

By tomorrow we start the reassembly. If all goes well the mast could be back on the boat in a week.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, South Africa

June 4, 2011-Another Project

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What is missing from this Photo?


I don’t know when the troubles with the main halyard started, when the friction began to get bad, probably on the first Indian Ocean leg when we were crossing from Sumatra to Mauritius, but I do know we were aware of the problem before leaving Mauritius. A few times in Mauritius the sail was tough to put up or down but not impossible. I guessed the problem was in the sheave at the top and in the track itself. Maybe we could have repaired it in Mauritius but I knew the repair would require the mast to come out and I thought that this was impractical in Mauritius. I thought we could manage it until Africa. So we took the risk and left it as it was. It got worse on the next leg, from Mauritius to South Africa, but it never failed completely.

Despite my belief, or hope, that it would be OK every time on that passage that we put up the main, reefed, or took it down I half expected it to jam and become unmovable which I knew would be a disaster. I was in dread of that and it always was a tremendous relief when the sail actually moved when we needed it to; if it was not smooth at least it moved. Because of that very great worry we were very careful never to raise or lower the sail when there was a heavy load on it, going to extraordinary measures like coming all the way up into the wind while reefing or unreefing just to get the main to luff and relieve the pressure on the track and halyard.

The strategy worked and we had no major problems but I silently breathed a big “whew” when the main finally came tumbling down for the last time after we charged into Richard’s Bay on that stormy night in April. Once the sail was on deck at the end of that passage I knew it wouldn’t go up again until I’d had a chance to fix it.

Now we’ve started that project: The mast came out today; we hired a crane and, with just George and Ellen to help us, did it ourselves. That which was a bit nerve wracking because we haven’t pulled the mast ourselves before, but now it is sitting on the lawn at Zululand Yacht Club. It will go back in when we have replaced the main halyard sheave, repaired the mast track, fixed a couple of other items, checked everything else and painted it. It is another big project for us.

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Working Under The Coconut Palms

But we’ll do it.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, South Africa

May 02, 2011-Drying out in Zululand

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Drying the 3A

We are in Zululand Yacht Club in Richard’s Bay, South Africa, in the warm north east of the country famed for game parks and quiet living. Things are pretty easy going here especially in the boatyard where quite a lot of funky boats are getting refurbished. This is where we plan to work on our mast after we get back from some land travel.

The weather in Zululand has been great for drying out the boat and we’ve pulled the last of our damp sails out of the forepeak. Here the 3A kite gets some fresh air before being stowed for God knows how long. There's been an occasional rainy day but mostly we’ve had sunshine and blue skies.

That land travel promises to be exciting. We’ll go to a Safari Camp in one of the oldest game reserves, Mmfolozi, and then to a hilltop lodge in HluHluwe, another reserve nearby. After these visits we plan to venture further, to Kruger National Park. In fact we might be there already but for all the holidays which have jammed up the bookings.

But we’ve got the time and things will get organized. We’ll do our trips.

Meanwhile, we'll dry a few things, do a few little projects, and enjoy the weather.

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Zululand Marina, Richards Bay, South Africa