Repairs At Sea

Jacksonville FL Public Library
December 14, 2005

We set off Tuesday morning from the St Mary's River Inlet bound for Cape Canaveral, 170 miles away. We had a 48 hour weather window before the wind was forecast to reverse, and I reckoned that it would take us 35 hours to get there.

The day before, I noticed that one of the control lines for the Monitor self-steering was chaffed. I rushed to West Marine, and purchased new line to replace both control lines, then installed them on Tarwathie while at the dock waiting for the canvas man to install the dodger.

About one hour out, one of the Monitor control lines came loose. It had been anchored by a stop knot, and the knot must have come untied. Tsk tsk, shame on me. To put it back was tricky. It had to pass through a hole in the Monitor gear that is 2 feet behind the stern and right down at the water level. There was no way to reach it from up on deck.

I put on a life jacket, and had Libby start the motor and point us up into the wind. Then I climbed off the stern and held on to and stood on the monitor rails while I tried to fish the control line out from behind a block. It was very bouncy out there. With each passing wave I was dunked in the water up to my knees. I had to hang on very tight to keep from falling off.

I didn't succeed in getting the line that way. The only other options to fix it was to jump in the water (hopefully with the engine stopped) or to launch the dinghy and try to fix it from that base. The water was too cold for me to appreciate swimming. The dinghy idea would be very risky. With the stern rising and falling, if it fell on the dinghy's rail it would flip the dinghy over in a second.

We resolved to give up and sail back inland to do the repairs. The next stop was the St John's River entrance to Jacksonville. So that's what we did. By 1600 we sat at anchor and by 1700 I repaired the Monitor from the dinghy. Alas, we lost our weather window. Therefore we changed plans. Today we sailed 20 miles up the river to downtown Jacksonville. There's an anchorage here within walking distance to a shopping mall. Tomorrow, Libby will do her Christmas shopping, then we'll check the weather for another window.

I consider the Monitor as highly critical equipment. If it doesn't work, standing the watches is much more tiresome and would add to our fatigue problem on long voyages. I don't know if I can find a better way to repair the Monitor at sea, but I'll try. It sure would be easier if we had a young, strong, (and perhaps foolish), crewman willing to do things like jump into the cold water. I think of Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 16 Tons, "a mind that's weak and a back that's strong." Any nominations?

A truly prepared crew is ready to repair or replace anything and everything onboard. That's a nice ideal, but before being prepared for every repair at sea, I have to have at least one practice doing the same repair on land or at anchor. That will take years to accumulate that much experience. Joshua Slocumb set sail around the world along, but after retirement from a lifetime's experience at sea.