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'Knock Knock Jack Flash' was (not surprisingly, with a
moniker like his) first to reply to our bulletin board posting...
"I was dismasted once, but managed to retrieve the
boom. Taking the two oars from my dinghy, I drilled, with a brace and bit, a hole in each oar blade.
I then butted the two blades together, with a a piece of ply across them, then used my original boom as my mast.
I used the No. 2 Jib as my main sail but flew it loose-footed. It got me home alright
but it was, admittedly, slow."
Meanwhile, we received an e-mail from a lady
skipper based in the Mediterranean who faced a problem during an Atlantic
crossing...
Jenny Davies and her crew, in the rough
seas of late January 1998, found themselves faced with a rudder which had torn
away along its length, "...possibly as a result of coming into contact with
one of many large floating and semi-submerged objects, ranging from timbers to
some sort of tank-like objects which seemed to appear with alarming
regularity."
The rudder stock was still in place, with
about seven inches of splintered wood still attached to it.
We were obliged to use a
cabin door as a makeshift rudder and I was surprised at how well it worked, in
spite of being smaller than the snapped-off original. Having drilled six holes ,
as neatly as we could, along the length of the hinge edge of the door, one of
the crew, getting very wet but only slightly bruised in the process, lashed
polypropylene line round the stock and through the holes.
Joe used several short lengths, 'borrowing' spare
sail ties for the purpose, to make the new 'rudder' fast and then used a
continuous length to tension the whole thing up and make it secure."
Two other crew held onto the bosun's chair and
harness containing Joe, who was working on the jury rig, having cleated off the
ends of their lines in case of mishap, so that Joe would still be attached to
the boat if anything went wrong. They were able to keep the correct tension on
the lines to enable Joe to use both hands and, he doubtless felt reassured that
two of his crewmates were looking out for him as he worked. He asked for a pair
of heavy duty work gloves while assessing the problem, as he wanted to avoid
filling his hands with splinters, sensibly.
"We found that we felt the need to check on the
condition of the makeshift rudder less and less frequently, as we became
accustomed to the fact that it was working fine. We managed 320+ miles of sailing in this manner and, whilst I wouldn't recommend it
as a permanent fixture, a cabin door seems to do fine duty as a rudder when push
comes to shove."
Have you managed to get round a problem at sea in
an ingenious manner? We'd love to hear all about it.
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