A Tale of Two Chemists: The Caribbean 1500 Rally – Portsmouth, VA to Tortola

Sunday 5^th to Thursday 15^th November

It’s been four days since we arrived in Nanny Cay and the fact that all four of us are still talking to each other and that we worked well as a team throughout the adventure has got to be the single biggest thing that “worked well”. It was hard work on the passage. It’s bumpy, the boat is hot as blazes, things go wrong and you don’t get as much sleep as you need. So the fact that we got on as well as we did is a great tribute to my team members. We ran a formal watch schedule from 6pm to 8am with 2-hours on watch, 2-hours in support in the cockpit and 4-hours off. Overall this worked really well and with seven watch periods each day meant that the sequence moved on one period each day. We always wore lifejackets whilst on deck and were pretty much always clipped in as well. During the day we all tried to get some additional sleep, but I wonder in retrospect whether it might be better to have a 24 hour schedule so everyone felt they had free time during the day. We had a cooking rota and menu that also worked well, but towards the end we didn’t stick to it quite so rigorously. When it was rough we skipped cooking and ate snacks, but that didn’t happen too much.

Overall the boat performed really well. We did have a few glitches. On the first night off Cape Hatteras the engine died and wouldn’t restart even when we switched to the alternate fuel/water separator. I ended up changing both the fuel separator and fuel filter and all was well. It was a messy job out in the chop and in retrospect probably not necessary. It’s more likely that it was air in the fuel lines, introduced when I changed filters in Portsmouth and freed up by the bouncing around. Manually priming the pump might have sorted things and been a lot easier. We had some issues with our rate compass which provides our “heading” and allows us to overlay radar onto the chart. It seemed to be a wiring connection problem to the autopilot controller and it was Rod who finally sorted it when he found that it was poor insulation on two unconnected wires that was screwing things up. In the middle of the trip our radar stopped functioning properly. With some playing around we were able to get it going again and the issue never recurred so not sure what that was about. Our autopilot also tripped out a number of times one evening, and we added some additional hydraulic fluid (another messy job) and that problem didn’t recur. However, later in the trip when we were working against significant seas (5-8 foot swells plus 3-5 foot waves) the autopilot started making clunking noises. The drive unit is mounted on a “pin/ball” and may just need greasing – but it needs looking into. At the start we had set up our removable inner forestay and mounted the stay sail for when we needed it (in fact we never used it). Towards the end of the passage we noticed the forestay looked really loose and we realized the pin holding it in place had come off completely and it was waggling around with the sail attached. We only found the pin after reaching Tortola. The only other breakage related to the genoa, where we think that the bearings on both “cars” that control these lines are worn and need replacing. They are making an awful creaking noise! We also had a significant abrasion to one of the genoa sheets and that needs replacing. Perhaps the most problematic issue we had was when we inadvertently wrapped our fishing lines around the rudder. I should explain that we troll a couple of lines that are like 4mm paracord. During the night whilst turning upwind and reefing for a squall I suspect I looped around and wrapped these around the rudder. This could potentially be disastrous. We did nothing until morning, at which point we could see we could see we had one end of a line on deck and the other end trailing behind the boat, but we couldn't pull it through because the gear attached to it would have jammed in the rudder. I was able to use our fishing rod and line equipped with a weight and a large treble hook to catch the trailing line. With both ends in hand we could feel that it could be pulled through, so we cut the line pulled it through and freed up rudder. That was a relief!

Other than that everything worked fine!