04 March 2014

Through the worst of it

With area winds forecast to drop (!) to 34 knots by midnight tonight and then to 25 knots by 7am tomorrow, I'm through the worst of it.  I set up 3 lines from various strong points on the boat (I have samson posts fore, centre and aft) to the mooring buoy, one of them is showing signs of chafe but the other two are fine.

The anchor shackle broke -- once again -- I previously broke one part way across the Tasman, but this time I have the advantage of having tied a buoy to the anchor.  The buoy is still floating nearby and hasn't been gathered up and blown away by the winds, so it must still have my anchor just below it tied with the length of line I used, so it's just a matter of waiting for the winds to abate and going over in the dinghy to retrieve it.  It does mean that I don't have a back up plan if the mooring drags tonight, or if the tie lines break, but it shows no sign of doing that and the winds are less now than they have been for the last 24 hours.

I'll clearly have to invest in a better brand of shackles.  This one has snapped through the D ring, on heaving up the anchor chain I retrieved the top half but not the bottom half of the shackle.  I suspect my other one broke in the same place.

I have started the engine and I'll leave it running through the night in case there's a breakage that means I need it.

There was an annoying leak in the tiller joint which was causing water to pool through the joint and drip onto my bunk, I have plugged it up with goo for the time being so it's no longer dripping but I'll have to pull it apart and fix it properly when the weather is dryer.

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