11:.58.35N 40:51.61W

 

Well, after days of singing the praises of the Hydrovane and being mesmerized by the way she has steered the boat, she is now permanently off watch.......the  shaft has sheared clean off!

 

For those of you who have seen one these bits of kit, you will understand that we are astonished that the shaft has sheared.  This is one seriously strong bit of kit.  We have not hit anything and also our main rudder on the boat would have come up if we had done so.  There is also no damage or even a scratch to the rudder. 

 

Fortunately we had a tether on the rudder which saved the rudder from being lost.  Looking at the bit of shaft left in the rudder head, there appears to be a dark ‘fault line’ line in the steel, fore and aft in line with the rudder.  This would indicate that the shaft has roken through sideways pressure of the the rudder turning.

 

  

 

We are in the process of contacting Mr Hydrovane.

 

What does it mean for us?  In a nutshell, it’s like losing a crew member.  We are now hand steering much of the time and when we are not we have reduced speed so that the electronic auto pilot can cope with the conditions and not use too many precious amps. 

 

Conditions remain lively with Force 6-7, the odd burst of F8 in the squalls and big seas.  In the squalls we are getting used to the howling banshees in the rigging.  This morning we had a humdinger of a tropical downpour for about 2 hours that reduced visibility to less tha 50m.   But we loved it as the decks looked like the Ganges in flood as all the red dust that we had picked up off the coast of Africa got washed off the rigging and mast.  

 

All crew tired but still smiling (well, not when Hydro quit).

 

We crack on...............and if the weather gods give us a slightly less windy day for a change we won’t complain!