Arion has arrived in Cairns after a 200 mile coastal passage from Townsville. The first few days were light downwind sails with the wind varying from SW to SE. Sometimes there was more swell than one might expect and the sail banged around a bit but we kept moving nicely along, just quietly gybing as needed. I remembered similar passages with the bermudian rig and all the swearing and resetting of poled out headsails required. I had a friend sailing in company on one leg in an 11 metre cruiser racer of moderate displacement and twice my theoretical hull speed. Not only was he doing a lot of foredeck work and swearing, but he could not shake me, we were side by side all the way (Arion is 7 metres and very heavy). On one leg I was closehauled in a 5 - 10 knot breeze and a smooth sea and was sailing at 3 knots, as well as the boat has ever done. The sail set beautifully and the 4% camber David Tyler designed for my sail seems just right. Controlling batten stagger when reefing and furling is an ongoing project but it is managable with the use of two luff hauling parrels.
After leaving Dunk Island the wind picked up and we really began to scoot along. I wanted to see how the boat reacted to being driven hard so hung on to my sail. I don't swing the sail across but have a fixed balance varying from 15% at the tack to 10% at the throat and the boat seems perfectly balanced on all points of sail. Driving hard downwind at maximum hull speed, 6 - 6.5 knots, catching the odd slide on the crest of a wave, with the wind building to 15 knots gusting 20, showed the boat to be as well mannered as it always was, self steering all the way with no sign of wanting to round up. I really should have dropped two panels at this point but it was a sea trial and pushing the boat hard can teach you a lot.
I was feeling very smug at this point and then CRACK, without warning the yard broke in half. I was stupidly using a lightweight 60mm dia yard designed for a smaller flat sail, that I put on last year when my thinking was defective. After hearing of Annie's bent yard and remembering that Jester once cracked a yard, I wanted to replace the yard with the 100mm dia one David had specified and I had built originally but my friend Jay had dumped it, so I was just watching the situation carefully. The yard showed no sign of flexing before it snapped. It had an internal sleeve but I discovered that it stopped just 200mm forward of the middle and this is where it snapped. The unsleeved section only had a 1.5mm wall thickness and I am amazed it didn't break sooner. When it broke the top three battens were bent too as the top sheeted batten was taking all the load. I quickly lowered the sail, lashed the yard up with a wooden oar and hoisted half the sail again. If I had to go to windward I would have needed to straighten the battens as well but I was confident that the reinforced trade wind was going to blow me home and it did without further incident. I have already straightened the battens (38 x 3mm, and surprisingly difficult to do - I think they are more than strong enough for regular use.) I will now build a new yard from 100 x 3mm tube and think it is unlikely that I will break that. It did teach me just how critical the integrity of the yard is to this rig, but also how easy it was to patch something together and keep going.
Amazingly the sail did not tear. It was under tremendous load but the strong, stretchy fabric and the substantial tabling all around and webbing boltropes on luff and leech kept it all together. I am now confident in my sail too, though I still think this light stretchy material is ill suited to straight stitching. If I was going to cross an ocean I would restitch it with zig zag seams.
The alloy mast (200 - 110mm x 5mm, sleeved for first 1.5m) gave no trouble and appeared more than stiff enough. I cannot imagine breaking it short of cartwheeling down the face of a rogue wave, and even then..., but I have had some minor corrosion problems where I wrapped some old, salty rope around the bit that I sleep next to. I was astonished to discover that it had pitted the surface in numerous places. I have not yet taken off the mast boot to see if there is any problem there. If there is I will try and stabilise it with some sort of sealing compound like Tactil 700.
Given that I have a few other things to sort out on the boat (GPS system down, anchor cable rusty and a bit worn, to name just two items I prefer to have in perfect order) and am already living on my credit card, I have decided I had better stay here in Cairns for a season and finish the refit Jay made such a magnificent start on. I will have a much better cash flow next year when an inheritance comes through and can then decide what to do. My health stood up to the passage ok, although I felt very dirty, tired and sore by the time I arrived in Cairns. But it was really good to be back on Arion and see the little boat sailing better than it ever has, considering all round performance. I hereby declare my rig conversion (man and boat) to be a (somewhat belated) success. I took some photos along the way and will try to post them on my profile page. I will also post them on my Facebook page (Graham Cox, born 12/04/1952 in Durban South Africa - apparently there are numerous Graham Coxes on Facebook - and I thought i was the only one!)