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Back aboard our little ship, the captain decides it is time to run up the mast and un kink the vhf aerial, put out of alignment by the attempted but aborted landing of the baby booby. Out comes the bosuns chair, and lines onto the main winch. Anglo crew having the broadest shoulders by far, is winch man – her captain likes to share the tasks around! He always enjoys the view from that vantage point up the mast, and is fascinated by the different perspective the height gives. The simple act of humans walking along the deck or dock, viewed vertically is remarkable. Legs suddenly launch jerkily from the tubular body, and, like a runaway marionette, propel it forward on its journey. The captain raises his eyes to the twisted aerial and straightens it to a reasonable likeness of the original – transmission has not been affected. Glancing around the truck, casually checking the other fittings his heart suddenly plunges to deck level. There, right in front of his eyes is a sight that for a moment he just cannot believe. As the reality sinks in, and his blood runs cold, he curses his luck. Our little ship is fitted all round with rod rigging except for the furling forestay, which is the normal nineteen strand stainless steel cable. Eighteen of these strands are fine, but number nineteen has popped away from its swage. They are about to embark on one of the longest ocean passages, to the Marquesas Islands [3200nm], and setting off with one strand failed is not an option. How has this happened? It would be expected to see this at deck level end as all moisture, fresh and salt, obeying gravity, runs downward and lodges at the swage there, eventually creating a problem. Whatever the cause, and this is to be debated at length later, the fact remains this is a major problem and must be fixed. She wonders how long this is going to hold them up – don’t they know, she is built for sailing and already becoming tired of the constant lookout in this cramped anchorage. To fly a new forestay in from Miami is a horrendous cost, and could take up to three months for it to actually arrive. The other option is to find an engineer who could swage on a replacement buckle. There are many of these roadside engineers throughout Ecuador and they are all called ‘Miguel’. Our crew set off to find a ‘Miguel’ and at the fifth stop find a wonderful, quietly spoken man (actual name Miguel!) who recognises and understands the problem in an instant and comes up with a solution. We cut off the old buckle, he welds on a longer sleeve piece and then swages the whole assembly back on to the forestay shroud – he has the heavy hydraulic press equipment to do the job. The next part of the project is to deliver the forestay to Miguel. There not being a dock the problem looms large in their minds. Fortunately, Santa Cruz has an honorary British Consul. This gentleman arrived twenty five years ago in his seventy five foot sailboat and never left. As luck would have it his yacht (very little used nowadays) is moored not far away and he very generously offers the use of his deck. This length is needed because some of the aluminium foil sections have corroded together and our crew are going to have to slide the cable out without snapping even one of these sections. Next morning sees her captain nervously bolting down some cereal for breakfast and casting an eye to the swell. It has dropped a little this morning, but he surmises even so, that anchored alongside the BC’s vessel there could be a combined difference of three to four metres rise and fall between their decks. Ughhh! he doesn’t want to think about the consequences of one wrong move! She creeps into position and anchors herself alongside within two metres and many fenders along the sides of both boats. The surge is frightening. By this time the crew from her Galapagos’ passage friend have joined the fray and are lined up on deck of the BC’s yacht to receive the complete furling forestay assembly, drum included, as it is lowered. In the event it comes down quite smoothly, albeit with a huge bend which does nothing for her captains blood pressure! Laying almost the full length of the deck and after a celebratory beer, the next task of sliding the cable out and coiling it into large loops on the afterdeck, is tackled. Because the drum has to be completely taken apart, without loss of one ball bearing, this becomes a major undertaking. If you want pressure, try this on a constantly moving and heaving platform when you know there are no spare parts within a thousand miles. The cable is laboriously worked through, accompanied by many sweaty stops for drinks. Finally, lying tamed, coiled and strapped on the poop it looks quite harmless. She wonders why her crew are looking so frayed and beat. The beam of the inflatable is 1.3 metres and the strapped coil has a diameter of two metres. It is quite heavy and lowering it into the tender produces a few more heart stopping moments. Balanced across the sponsons, sibling crew is assigned the job of not letting it slide off during the short but bumpy ride to shore. On pain of death she sits in the centre of the circle on the premise that if it goes over the side, she goes with it! Arriving back at Miguel’s, captain and Anglo crew having carried the coil fore and aft down a kilometre or two of dusty road, willingly accept the cold local beer proffered by Miguel. Whilst her apprehensive crew would like to stay and watch this marvel of engineering evolve, Miguel, in true engineers fashion, politely assures them that all will be well and, ‘Please to be coming back tomorrow’. Tomorrow they return and it is not ready. With misgivings growing and many tens of thousands of sucres later, having been spent on libation and dining out with the Beneteau crew, they are met on the third day by a beaming Miguel. He produces the forestay complete with a shiny new but much extended buckle, beautifully polished so that the weld seam is invisible and swaged on to the cable. The overall length is precisely the same to within one millimetre! Just a small job he tells them and produces an invoice equally miniscule and happily accepts payment of eighty American dollars in cash. The captain, not having kissed anyone for some little while, almost succumbs to the temptation – Miguel’s long droopy moustache however, by this time dripping with beer froth, holds him back! Happily bidding their farewells to Miguel, lugging the assembly back to the dingy was a decidedly light footed undertaking compared to the outward journey. Laying it out again on the BC’s deck, the next undertaking is to thread the cable back up the twenty metres of foil. In the meantime, the drum end cable has sprung slightly and resisting all sweaty efforts, refuses to go back along its tunnel of aluminium. Many attempts later, twining down the bitter end into a wrapped cone shape fine enough to travel, it is once again arduously grafted and coaxed along the full length until it finally appears accompanied by the whoops of joy from our crew. The captains’ relief is palpable as this means they can now embark on the next stage of their voyage with impunity. Once again with the help of the BC’s deck and Beneteau crew, re-installation of our modified forestay to the mast and forepeak of our little ship, goes without a hitch. Extract from my ebook ‘Voyage of the little Ship ‘Tere Moana’ downloadable from my sailboat2adventure website website for Sailors
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