Some drama befalls us

Thursday 9 Dec, Cape Fear NC to Brunswick GA, cruising day 12: Perfect downwind sailing. A mystery parachute flare. Near disaster with the mast vang and gooseneck fittings. A dolphin dancing show provided by Neptune!

There are always memorable moments when ocean sailing. Some moments of elation and others when you are struck with shear trembling fear. Moments you will never forget. We’ve read about crews making a lucky catch, saving a goose-neck failure. And we’ve also heard of those that were not so lucky, and the enormity of consequences when that vital joint in the rig (boom meets mast) catastrophically fails. It’s one of those things I had thought “ours is built like a Sherman tank, that will never happen to us”. Well, it almost did, and the only person to blame is Cloudy Bay’s so-called maintenance guru come Captain come totally brainless Numpty ☹. More on this later.

As midnight passes, Oana is asleep and me on watch. We have just passed Cape Fear, which was indeed fearful, and Cloudy Bay is now fast reaching in 24kts wind, heading SW towards Charleston. The wind direction is forecast do its usual after the passing of a weather front: clock right NW to NE to E.
Following our starboard turn back at Cape Fear, if we had sailed the rhumb-line to Charleston, it would have been unpleasantly hard-on the wind at first, then a reach, then later too far off the wind to be powered-up properly. We instead opt for a banana route, which starts with us heading out into the Atlantic on a beam reach and then curving round to the right, following the wind shift, keeping the boat both comfortable and fully powered-up, all the way.

Initially, other than the thrill of speed as Cloudy Bay effortlessly ploughs the seas, the early-hours start uneventfully. At 1am I go down and change Oana’s alarm to 4:30am to let her sleep some more, because I need to supervise Cloudy Bay anyway, until the point where I get her running goose-winged and I can safely hand over to Oana. And frankly, I’m really enjoying driving Cloudy Bay at top speed in these wonderful sailing conditions under a stary night sky and with phosphorescence magically sparkling in the foaming water that rushes past the cockpit.

Then, we have the first event of the morning. And I tell it with a vexed feeling of guilt. At one point, out the corner of my eye and off our port quarter, I catch what looks like an orange parachute flare drifting downwards, probably about 6-8 miles away. Now, if it had been red, I would have instantly reacted with a call to the coast guard. But orange? What is that about? Some navy exercise again? I stare at the same spot for 5 long minutes but see nothing else. Then I scrutinize the radar images. Nothing there either. I also check we are still monitoring VHF channel 16, the international call and distress channel.
For a while I consider turning around and sailing in that direction. But what was “that direction”? With Cloudy Bay weaving all over the place in the pitch dark, I really didn’t know better than plus or minus 30 degrees, at best. And then was it 2 miles away? 4? 8? Who knows? So, rightly or wrongly, I forget about it and carry on.

But at daybreak, when I wake up and Oana is on shift, she says the coast guard have been announcing over VHF for all-ships to look out for a guy apparently in distress, off the South Carolina coast, but no other details. My heart thumps hard as I tell Oana what I saw. Stupidly, I didn’t even take note of the time, let alone write down our position. Just what sort of responsible mariner am I? ☹
We decide that I should call the coast guard anyway and at least give them an idea of the position. Long story short, after being asked lots of pointless details about us and our boat, they finally get around to telling us the “person in distress” was a false alarm, and they don’t even bother ask me where or when I saw the flare! A bit odd. But I feel better having at least tried to share my observation.

The next event, for us at least, is significantly more heart shaking. Before waking Oana at 4am, I get the genoa poled out to starboard and put us on a fast deep run, sailing with full sails now (no reefs) and with the genoa sailing slightly by-the-lee. Super powerful. Then I go back to the inside to wake Oana. But before I climb into the cockpit, I have one of those “shall I or shan’t I” moments, regarding tightening the gybe preventer. Following a previous accidental gybe, where we were both shaken to her core, Oana likes to see the preventer tensioned up to the max when she is to be on watch alone. Quite right too, so I go do it.
And while around the mast, with Cloudy Bay rolling as usual when downwind sailing, I notice the vang joint at the mast wobble. And I think to myself “must get a new bolt machined for that one day, to stop that excess play”. Then I notice a large M12 bolt on the deck next to the mast foot … and all hell breaks loose inside my head, peaking my adrenalin. The bolt had come out of the heavy-duty mast fitting for the vang. I find all 20 bolts have either already fallen out or about to fall out. And the plate is yanking violently on the mast, with just a few last few threads holding the fort. Jeeeezus!
The forces involved at that joint – when on the run in 22kts wind, with full mainsail, big seas, a 1/4 ton of boom and gas-filled hydraulic vang – are simply HUGE. It is unthinkable what would happen if that plate parted company with the mast. I dive down below to get my electric driver and hex-head fitting. And one by one I resecure each bolt back into place. And while doing this I glance up at the even more critical goose-neck mast plate. And that is also loose, with just 1 or 2 of the 20 bolts still fully torqued. The rest are at best loose, at worst hanging out.
Unbelievable. And the shear fate that I caught this is staggering.

When Oana emerges in the cockpit, I tell her the story. She can see I’m still visibly distressed. If I had a whip handy, I would give myself 20 lashings. Or even a keel-haul would be more appropriate (if we had barnacles). During the re-fit, when I had reinstalled those two plates back onto the mast, I had put a butyl sheet under each mast fitting to separate the dissimilar metals, to stop corrosion. And when I tightened the bolts, the butyl had started to squeeze out. I didn’t want it all squeezed out, but I did want the bolts tighter, and locked in place. So I decided to leave the final tightening, and locking each bolt with red-locktite, until the rig was back up. Then I forgot. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I FORGOT! And never in my wildest dreams could I imagine all the bolts loosening all at the same time! Dumb of me. Stupid. In fact, darn-right negligent. I need to fire myself – yes, that would be appropriate. Glen, you’re fired! Alan Sugar style.

And it doesn’t end there. After a 2 hour sleep I go check the bolts again. And what do you know – all of them are starting to back-out already. So out comes the locktite! And I check another 3 hours later (in fact every 3 hours) and they have all remained tight. Phew! And double phew! That was a close call.

In the late morning, as if sent specially to calm my nerves by Neptune, we are treated to a dolphin show. We’ve had the odd 1 or 2 dancing in the bow wave but now we have a pod of at least 15 and they are super energetic. They stay with us for almost an hour, effortlessly keeping up with Cloudy Bay’s 8-10kts speed. They seem to jostle for best position at the bow. Then 3 or 4 of them will peel off, do some pirouettes in the air then rejoin the bow group. Or disappear around the stern then dart forward and jump out the face of the stern wave. They really seem to like this dolphin version of wake boarding! These animals are simply amazing. They never fail to both warm our hearts and put big smiles on our faces. Isn’t nature just amazing? It’s a pity most of mankind don’t have real experiences that adequately demonstrate how we share the world with other amazing creatures. It’s not all ours alone ☹

During the day, with my heart rate returning to normal, we continue on the same goose-winged deep run (starboard tack) parallel to the coastline, about 30 nm offshore, passed Charleston and Savanna too. We do this, rather than take the direct rhumb line (Charleston to St. Augustine) for two reasons. Firstly, a direct route would get us into the edges of the gulf stream, where we would be adversely affected be the opposing current. Secondly, the forecast shows a bit of an oddity today. There are calm winds offshore and no wind on land. But running along and parallel to the coast is a 15-20kt wind that stretches from the coastline to about 50nm out to sea. Almost like a wind conveyer-belt tailored especially for us. So our trajectory mimics the curving coast, and we keep the same sail plan all day, all the way to just south of Savanna, Georgia.

Then, close to Brunswick, and bang-on forecasted place and timing, the wind rapidly drops and becomes unsailable. But we had a fantastic run with nothing to complain about: 250 nm of non-stop fast sailing. Now the engine comes on and we motor the last 90nm to St. Augustine. It was in fact good timing. The batteries were needing a re-charge and we want to get both our 480ltr water tanks completely full of nice new RO water from our water maker, with new membranes (thankfully we had modified Cloudy Bay’s electrical systems so we can make water while motoring, via the 3.5Kw inverter).

Midnight sees us gently rolling along, with the Volvo at 1400 RPM and Gori propeller in overdrive gear, as we close-in on the Florida state border.