How a real sailor handles problems at seaIn July, Australian Lisa Blair became the
first woman to circumnavigate Antarctica, solo. Her original intent was to do it in one continuous push, and break the speed record for this voyage.
However, in 40 knot winds and 7-9 meter seas, her
boat was dismasted. She notified authorities with a
"Pan Pan" radio call. A Pan Pan means I have serious problems, but not immediately life threatened. A sort of "stand by, I may need help but not just yet" message.
She ultimately took on extra fuel from another ship, jury rigged a new mast, and motor sailed to Cape Town and repaired the boat. She then returned to the point where she had been dismasted, and completed the rest of her circumnavigation of Antarctica. It is instructive, and inspiring to read her blog posts about
planning the jury rig, and
building the jury rig.
Even for non-sailors, I think it is instructive to see what a determined, skilled person can do to turn a survival situation into a successful venture.
On planning:
After the stress of the fuel transfer yesterday I was absolutely shattered, both mentally and physically. As soon as the fuel was stowed and the boat was safely motoring north I went to bed and fell into a deep deep sleep. I needed to wake to maintain my required sked with MRCC Cape Town, but that was the only thing I needed to wake up for. So after going to bed at sunset, I didn’t arise until after the sun was up. After such a long sleep, I was beginning to feel human again and decided to tackle the day with positive attitude. There is not much that I let get me down in life and the experiences of the last few days are just bumps in the road. You can go over them, around them or through them but you always get past them. This to me is no different. I hope in no time at all this bump will be behind me and I will be able to continue sailing away.
On that note, today was a day focused on building my jury rig and starting to sail. I have to say that it is quite a lot of work building a jury rig. You really need to think of everything, as once you get it up you really don’t want to have to lower it again just because you forgot to tie a rope on... So today was one of planning and starting the process of getting my boom vertical so I can sail with my storm sails and assist my little motor towards Cape Town.
On building the jury rig:
I had finished clearing the decks off yesterday, so today was all about running the guide ropes that I will need to hoist the mast. I also needed to angle grind off the torn weld marks at the base of the boom so that I would prevent the boom from doing more damage to the hull. This was the first task that I started with and ended up with me covered in metal shavings but the job was a success and I now have a boom that is a smooth as a baby’s bottom.
I also needed to drill out the shackle attachment point for the old topping lift point. At the moment, it would only allow me to put a small to medium shackle in the hole however this was going to be the place that I attached my backstay, running backstays and side shrouds, so I needed to make sure that this was going to be strong. So, I drilled out the hole to make it large enough to fit one of my large 10 Ton shackles.
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