There was this metallic bang. AW in bunk instantly rigid, thinking oooh s..t! I know what that is - and so it turned out. The starboard inner shroud - the big heavy one that supports the lower half of the mast - has started to strand, or break, strand by strand. Happened in the Atlantic last time too - and now I wish I had insisted on staloks but that's life. This despite bungees to stop the shrouds moving. We have bypassed the swage using cable clamps and turnbuckles and we're sailing again, but it's softly softly from here. Really serious problem if it develops. Even worse of the port one starts to go as well. Big, big effort getting it sorted - and in the middle of it all, murphy struck again - cannot imagine how this one happened, but all the line in the furler drum ran out long before we could get the sail all rolled up. Sorted that one too, not without some interesting events.
So the state of play - I have spoken to the rigger who made the rig and he's sending the dimensions of the shroud to the website. I will call our contact in Seattle to see whether we can get 2 new ones made there, or anchorage, and shipped to us, else have them made in Sydney and shipped to Dutch.
Not the end of the world, but may slow things down a bit while we faff around. Watch this space!
Meantime I'm going to Consult - Mcq is cooking noodles for afters. Dr Steve, yours was next in the Medicinal Compound Management Plan and very good it was. The whole set of three brews has aged beautifully.
A couple of hours later - i've rung around the world sorting possible options - the most important thing now is to get through Amchitka and to dutch. From there we can fix anything. We've got the small heady and the trisail up, doing 5kt in roughly the right direction - losing a bit of height, unfortunately, but trying to keep the rig unstressed. Quite messy and still semi violent so taking it very easy. Weather for the next three days is critical - but we'll get there. Wouldn't be a proper Berri voyage without one go at least of trisail-in-anger so I hope this is the only one needed! Next watch, after some sleep, I'm going to put a cable clamp on all the other shrouds so that if any of them initiate recalcitrance, we've got 'em covered and can rig a bypass very quickly.
We're 3 miles from the US of A...wooohooo and yeeehaaaa! By the time you read this, AGW, we'll be in the promised land.
Best option from here might be for me to fly to Anchorage from Dutch with the dead one and find a rigger. We'll see what turns up.
