Cayenne: Repairs Across the Pacific

by Michael Moradzadeh

Cayenne raced across the Pacific this July in the Pacific Cup race. Many Club members were nice enough to follow our dispatches available on the CYC website.

The trip was wonderful. Cayenne placed third in her division. And we caught many fish. However, I’ve been asked to write about fixing stuff.

Boat handling and navigation are, of course, critical to a successful race and passage. For Cayenne and most other boats, however, the main ingredient for success was avoiding and responding to gear breakage underway. Those that are able to stay in one piece will finish fast—and first.

Preparation, preparation, preparation. The passage begins the moment you decide to go. From that instant on, you are balancing your time between on-shore responsibilities and getting the boat ready. It also means going over the entire boat and anticipating breakage of every component. Ask yourself “what will you do when (not if) the _______ breaks?”

Working through the possibilities, and talking them over with experienced crew and friends, we were able to develop a quiver of Plan B’s, many of which we used!

Steering

Rudders fail. This is especially true of boats taken offshore for the first significant time. The waves out there are bigger and from a different direction. And you may rack up more hours sailing in three days than you did in the last year. ORC requires an alternate means of steering and the Pacific Cup makes this a focus of their safety lectures.

While Cayenne had no problems in this area, and was equipped with a massive backup rudder, many boats had serious trouble. One vessel’s rudder post came loose in the boat, another came loose inside the new rudder. Half a handful of others had serious steering problems as well (turn back, quit race, bob in the ocean for 15 extra days). Their backup systems rarely worked well, and some not at all, once out in the big stuff. Mimos, sadly, abandoned ship.

Our lesson learned was: inspect, test, and stress your system before departure. Take the alternate steering requirement seriously.

Rigging

Here we got into trouble. While we had a collection of extra blocks and lines, and were ready for any number of running rigging failures, which did not happen. We had a serious problem with some of the standing rigging.

The bails at the top of the mast, the ones that hold the spinnaker halyard, both failed. They broke off where they protruded over the tops of their mounting plates. This leads to a two-part problem: 1. How can we get a spinnaker up? 2. Will the solution create more problems than it fixes?

What we should have done is send a man up the mast on the spare jib halyard and fix the whole thing. I forget why we did not do that. What we did do was send a block up on the jib halyard and rig the spinnaker halyard through the block. That got the chute up, but created so much chafe that we had to drop the halyard every two hours to check for chafe and renew the protection. It turned out that the best antichafe was plumbing hose left over from the watermaker installation.

So, we were able to keep the chute up most of the time. We had a few chafe-related spinny halyard losses, from which we recovered easily by dropping the block-bearing jib halyard -- now renamed the “truckline” to avoid confusion. (By now, we wished we had followed Peter Hogg’s advice to add a line over the top of the mast “just in case.” I am installing one now.)

What we did not know was that the side pressure on the forestay was undermining its integrity, which would prove remarkably troublesome on the trip home. As best as we can fathom, the wires inside the Norseman fitting at the top of the forestay got damaged, allowing the wire to break free at the masthead. This did not happen till after the race, on the trip home.

As forestay losses go, it was mild. The jib luff held the mast up, and we took a spare jib halyard to the stem, stabilizing the mast. After a few experiments, we concluded that turning back for real repairs was the best move, and motored back to Oahu.

Lessons learned: have a backup plan to the backup. Sometimes being willing to go back is an important safety item.

Systems

Electrical, plumbing, waste, bilge, navigation, propulsion. These are systems with many delicate, moving, and/or cloggable parts, quite willing to fail just to make you look bad.

Electrical: 90% of the time, it’s a fuse or a loose wire. Which is good, because other stuff is hard to check. There is a sign inside our battery box that says “Check Fuses First.” Our main scare on electrical power was when the fuse to the regulator blew. After checking all the inputs and outputs to the regulator, I checked the fuse. Yup, that was it. Carry a lot of fuses. Have circuit diagrams for all your stuff, and, for extra credit, label your wires. This will make life easier.

Plumbing: It must not leak. We had this (if you will forgive the term) licked based on experiences last year. It is good to have manual operation at your sinks so you are not tempted to leave your pressure water on. One open faucet can mean “turn around” in a very short period of time. In any case, carry spare hose of all normal sizes in case you need to replumb your head (as we did in 2000) or make an antichafe for your halyards!

Navigation: From time to time, a gremlin would shut our nav system down. We know where the problem lies, but have not gotten around to fixing it. But you want to be sure that your compass is accurate. This November, when the winds are light, check your bearings against your compass readings. You’ll either be reassured or startled. Also, it’s better to have a nav system that does not shut down. Underway, however, I was unwilling to do the major reattachment of autopilot wires that I believe will cure the problem.

Propulsion: I am pleased to report that we had no required repairs underway, other than replacing a fuel filter when we sucked a tank dry. I had misremembered which one I had filled for the race. But we had carried a full set of tools and spares just in case. Sometimes appeasing the sea gods pays off.

Duct Tape. When all else fails, we duct taped things. Leaky hatches, chafe guards, whatever. We are not surprised to learn that duct tape cures warts, too.

Crew. I was fortunate enough to have on this trip several crew who were as interested in the maintenance side as myself. CYC Director John Warren has a Passport 47, and was quite familiar with many of the systems carried by Cayenne, a Passport 40. Other crew were (or became) rerigging enthusiasts, spending quite a bit of off-watch time anticipating our next move. All of these guys were splendid boat handlers, but to make it across an ocean, you need to be willing to plug the leaks.

For 2004, we hope to be even better prepared. Look for us in Kaneohe in July!