War of attrition: Southern Ocean damage

I may sound boring if i reiterate that we’re still in 35-40 knots of wind,
we have not seen anything less than 25 and anything up to 55 for the past
week and inevitably we’ve suffered some level of damage.

Australia is now only 750 miles above our heads but the finish line still
some 3100 miles to the east, it’s a long bloody way to New Zealand!

The first major item to pack up was the Watt&Sea hydrogenerator, the
bracket that holds it on the back of the boat buckled as a side wave must
have pushed the leg with great force, the leg itself is bent and for now
it is unserviceable.

Secondly, and more frustratingly, one of the two NKE wind wands has packed
up as a front swept over our heads, it read 55 knots minutes before
ceising to work. Both my wind wands packed up in leg one, one in a squall
by the doldrums, the second further south and we had to finish the
remaining 2500 miles with just compass mode for our autopilot and no
wind data at all… in Cape Town we reinstalled new wands at considerable
expense so to see one failing like that after less than 3 weeks of use is
really disappointing. Campagne de France had also been left with no wind
instruments, and no autopilot, for the last 1000 miles or so of leg one,
it’s a common problem and the designers should sit down and design these
units better and make them capable of withstanding 55 knots, we did, the
boat did, the sails did, why not the wind instruments?

The rest of the snags are to non critical areas of the boat, one of the
satellite phones does not recognize its own antenna and the other works
fine for data but we can no longer speak as water ingress in the plug
means it wont work, it’s an easy fix though, all it nees is a new crimped
plug but it’ll have to wait till Wellington.

Of course a famous ad would say being here is priceless watching the tips
of the albatrosses wings gently caress the crests of the waves, enormous
waves rolling one after the other, the boat surfing down valleys of
water… I have however to admit to struggling with the continuous
bloodshed of bills which add up so quickly, Cape Town cost around 5k in
repairs most of which were very kindly donated by you, the reading public,
through online donations at www.marconannini.com/help i really cannot
thank enough all those that contributed.

We are lucky though with the many companies that have supported us and
made our life that little bit easier, today we want to thank RTW Food for
their supply of excellent quality freeze dried foods, they have made a
real difference in the bad weather. A big thanks goes to Ventana Group who
is flying my girlfriend at each stopover, for morale i’m sorry but that
beats freeze dried 10:1!!! More thanks to the Mustang Club of Italy who
continues to support us and after a successful gathering of beautiful
Mustang Cars in Cape Town is arranging a gathering in Wellington. Thank
you also to the USZZ, the office for Slovak nationals living abroad. In
Cape Town we met with the Slovak Ambassador and the local Slovak community
where i showed up looking very elegant in my Chatham Marine sponsored
clothes which have served us so well ashore. The list continues, but i’ll
leave more names to thank for the next blog.

Posted by: firstclass