| At sea. Asian Record Circuit: B&Q becomes tangled in fishing lines and gets rudder change |
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| Tuesday, 28 March 2006 | |
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Team Ellen: Well the past few hours have been fairly interesting as we sailed up the east side of the Japanese island Tanega Shima. We were due to stay a bit protected from the waves to the east of the island, but we got more than we bargained for. Several hours later we are now north of the island heading north, with a whipping current taking us east.... but something is different - we have had to change the starboard rudder. It was all going OK, until we saw a fleet of fishing boats - about 4 or 5.l two were closer together, and we decided than rather that get too close to their bows - we would bear away and leave good space to their sterns.. this we did - but sadly their lines were heading off to sea in the direction that we were sailing, and at about 15 knots we licked up their line. We dropped the sails, and tried to remove the line from the rudder - but sadly it had cut into the leading and trailing edge. We had no option to cut the line -and then slowly undertook the job of changing the rudder - how glad we were that we had already done this once before, and had a good system to fix it! We drifted downwind with once we had our sails down, just gently, and without to much trouble, went about changing the rudder, It involved quite a lot of sitting on the float and pushing the old rudder out through the float - but we did it without too much trouble. The most amazing thing was the fishing boat, we were very worried that we had cut the fishing line and knew that we could not sail over to the fishing boat with the lines in the water. When he started to come over to us, we prepared some money in a bottle to throw over to help him repair his line, we thought that he'd be fairly angry - but the first thing he said, seeing us with our sails down - was “are you OK?” When I learnt that they had actually come over to see if we were OK, I felt a warm glow inside. Thinking that they would shout at us, they in fact came to help us! That’s pretty special in my book. We threw some cash anyway - even though he made it quite clear he did not want any money.... sometimes the bad moments in life can highlight the best things in life... and that did, in that moment. They waved goodbye and went on their way... and I think despite the work - we all had smiles on our faces... pictures to come. We are now sailing along upwind in about 25-29knots of wind. The sea is bouncy but OK, and we have two reefs and the staysail. We will see what the wind has to offer us tonight! Now above 35 as I finish the mail, we are now three reefs and staysail, it's getting bouncier and bouncier. Hoping that all is well at home, as our little world that is leaping up and down these waves seems a long way form there. All the best, from a magic mobi, and the team ex www.teamellen.com |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 28 March 2006 ) |
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