29.12.06 – a lazy day

The breeze came back today and we’ve been sliding quietly along. A gentle rhythm has been restored. Spirits have soared also, because we this morning we passed the halfway mark. I’m tinkering in the navigatorium while back aft Dave is trying to entice fish with a new and very seductive spinner. There are no seabirds in sight – I reckon that’s for the same reason Dave isn’t having any luck.

It has been the laziest of days – 6 careless knots over a sunny, almost flat ocean which imparts only subtle rhythms. Open hatches let the Pergolese out and warm drying breezes in. The barometer is steady but there are unmistakeable signs of approaching bad weather in the SW. We are in a very temporary paradise.

weather on the way

weather on the way

During the dark hours at sea the search for answers to small problems gnaws away. Not much beats the simple pleasure of coming across a solution, the more so when it is found to work. Such was our discovery today of two bolts the same size as the loosening grub screws in the Aries main support shoes. The screws had worked ok but were always coming loose. That meant the Aries rattled. Removing them, re-loctiteing them and reinserting them had to be done blind, while you were hung head down over the stern. These newfound bolts are large, can have mole-grips affixed for the insertion and are so much easier to use. And I found an old knife blade which worked perfectly as a shim for the loose tube.

End of a 4 week niggling worry.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.