Author: Bernd Page 92 of 130
The weather window is still stable with a huge high pressure system near the Azores hardly moving, which shall give us some N to NNE winds. A bit stronger at the beginning and then hopefully enough to sail through to the target destination.
I had the pleasure yesterday to have coffee & cake with Gerlinde and Josef from SY Vitamine, a HR382 sailing under Austrian flag.
Fair winds…
With a bright smile 😊 the Mariniero was standing next to the boat at 11am and handed over the parcel from HR Parts. Thu to Mo – not bad.
It is already installed and I look closely at the weather forecast.
Fair winds…
We are making progress. The new halyard from HR Parts is sitting at Lisbon airport and shall – according to UPS Tracking – be delivered tomorrow here at our doorstep. Let’t see and cross fingers.
With the help of the local sailmaker & rigger Toribio we managed to pull the old halyard robe/wire combination out of the mast. This cannot always been taken for granted but we were lucky and it came out easily. The new feeding line is set now inside the fast waiting for the halyard to arrive. It will then be a quick job to be completed and the lady is ready for the ocean again.
It all depends on UPS now and, obviously, on the weather.
Fair winds…
The halyards on our lady are of the traditional style. Wire – Robe design with a thimble at the end covered under a shrinking hose as shown on the left picture. The leftover after the event is shown in the right photo – a deformed thimble without any wire.
Problem seems to be that you cannot look behind the shrinking hose to ultimately determine the condition of the swage connection around the thimble. The visual inspections done stopped at the outer surface of the shrinking hose.
Nowadays halyards – as many other robes on recent boats – are made out of Dyneema, a light but high strength robe with good chafing resistance. No more wires involved.
Two new Dyneema Halyards have left Hallberg-Rassy Parts in Sweden today and shall arrive in Funchal Marina coming Wednesday. Great support from HR Parts just on the day before the long Midsummer weekend starts. Within five hours from my phone call with Ludvig the parcel got handed over to UPS and is on its way.
Tomorrow I will try to retrieve the broken end of the wire, which still sits somewhere inside the mast.
Fair winds…
After running 2 hours under engine, wind and waves on the nose increased to 25kn plus and I started to yell at all weather forecasts gathered before leaving. Luckily it turned out to be an acceleration zone around the western tip of Madeira.
We are now back to normal with 15-18kn making good progress in sugar conditions. It might not stay like this the whole voyage but let’s cross fingers, that Aiolos will be considerate to make this another passage in great comfort for us.
Fair winds…
