Torries

3737

june/july 2016

cruisingworld.com

padeye, I drilled and punched

out the old sheared-off rivets.

Then I had Carolyn take a

strain on the lower end of the

track, using the Dacron cord-

age led to one of our large

cockpit winches.

“Halt!” I shouted as the fi rst

hole in the track realigned

itself.

I quickly slapped in a new

stainless-steel rivet and fi xed

it in place using the same mas-

sive accordion-style rivet

gun that Carolyn had used to

attach our mast track in the

fi rst place.

The stainless rivets sucked

the spin track into place with

great force.

“Take in a tiny bit more,” I

told her, “but be careful. This

line is really loaded.”

Thus we straightened the

track, rivet hole by rivet hole.

But we soon faced a new

challenge when we came to

its end, which now resem-

bled a banana and curved far-

ther away from the mast, past

the point that a rivet could

tighten.

“Thank heavens we have

two sheet winches and a

bucket of snatch blocks,” I

told Carolyn as I ran another

line aft to the cockpit to hold

the track fi rmly against the

mast as we straightened it.

In one hour and 15 minutes,

we were done. We reset the

starboard pole, unrolled the jib,

and watched our boat speed

shoot back up to 7.5 knots.

Normally, I don’t mind

going slow, but the Indian

is such a washing machine

because of its cross swell that I

prefer to keep my speed above

6 knots.

As we tidied up our tools,

Carolyn asked, “Happy hour?”

“Absolutely!” I grinned.

Had the same situation

occurred back in Singapore,

I’d have probably spent a thou-

sand dollars and two months

fi xing it. Instead, we lucked

out. It happened in the middle

of the Indian Ocean at a cost

of 75 minutes and zero dollars.

As I later raised my glass of

soda water to Carolyn’s vin

rouge from Chez Cardboard,

she said, “When I fi rst noticed

the track, it looked so badly

mangled, I thought there was

no way we could fi x it off shore.

Good on ya for using the cock-

pit winches as your pry bar.”

I shrugged. “I think the

clever part was having the riv-

ets, rivet gun, variable-speed

drill and all the punches aboard

in the fi rst place,” I said. “Most

voyages fail at the dock, but not

this one. We carry over 1,000

pounds of tools and spare parts

precisely for such eventualities.

That’s why I can fi x anything

but a broken heart.”

We sat in silence as the sun

hissed into the western hori-

zon over our bows.

“You looked pretty funny,”

she mused.

I was lost in thought, recall-

ing the various steps of our

recent repair so I could cap-

ture them in an article.

“Huh?” I said.

“As you came careening up

on deck as a bespeckled Cap’n

Sewerage,” she said with a

smile. “I wanted to take a

picture with my iPhone and

send it to your Cruising World

editors with the caption ‘He’s

not only full of it on the inside

tonight!’”

I grinned. “It was the fi rst

time I realized that going bald

has its advantages.”

We sat in silence for a

few more minutes, and then

Carolyn said, “It’s not what

happens off shore. It’s —”

“How you deal with it,” I

fi nished for her.

“Touché,” she said.

Aft er a memorable crossing for all

sorts of reasons, the Goodlanders

and Ganesh made landfall in

Durban, South Afr ica, in early

November.

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In one hour

and 15 minutes,

we were done.

We reset the

starboard pole,

unrolled the jib,

and watched our

boat speed shoot

back to 7.5 knots.

CRW0217_ONW.indd 37 11/22/16 2:01 PM