Hydraulics - Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them!
During the early hours of Thursday morning Kate heard a strange banging noise every time the boat rolled. She eventually ventured into the Lazerette to investigate, only for the noise to stop - typical! Whilst looking around the Lazerette Kate discovered what appeared to be oil on top of some boxes but couldn’t find it’s source. Later we both spent over an hour looking for the oil leak as well as the rattle. The rattle was easily solved as it turned out to be lazy gas bottle which was leaning over with each roll but the oil leak was more difficult.
We finally found what we thought was the problem but we needed daylight to test the hydraulic system properly so waited till dawn. When we came to gybe at around 8am we pulled the mainsheet in using the hydraulic winch and then checked the lazerette. Oil was spraying out of a nut as an o ring had split. To be safe we decided to bring the mainsail down to allow us to fix the problem without the added pressure of needing the mainsheet winch.
After we both spent several hours in the Lazerette we managed to stop the leak and tidy up some of the me
ss.
With winds gusting upto 30 knots at time we were sailing at 7-8kts under genoa alone so we decided to wait till the seas had died down a little before hoisting the main again.
With the afternoon came a bit of a break in the wind so we decided it was a good time to hoist the mainsail, only for the vang (the ram which holds the boom down) to fail. This caused the boom to swing around violently but with some quick work with the topping lift and various lines we managed to tame it and bring it back under control. The vang is controlled by hydraulics and pneumatics and it appeared that a seal had failed between the two.
Unfortunately this meant that we couldn’t use the mainsail for the rest of the trip and also meant the end of our trip to New York. We decided it would be better to sail to Newport, Rhode Island where we hoped we would have a good chance of getting the vang repaired.
We finally found what we thought was the problem but we needed daylight to test the hydraulic system properly so waited till dawn. When we came to gybe at around 8am we pulled the mainsheet in using the hydraulic winch and then checked the lazerette. Oil was spraying out of a nut as an o ring had split. To be safe we decided to bring the mainsail down to allow us to fix the problem without the added pressure of needing the mainsheet winch.
After we both spent several hours in the Lazerette we managed to stop the leak and tidy up some of the me
ss.With winds gusting upto 30 knots at time we were sailing at 7-8kts under genoa alone so we decided to wait till the seas had died down a little before hoisting the main again.
With the afternoon came a bit of a break in the wind so we decided it was a good time to hoist the mainsail, only for the vang (the ram which holds the boom down) to fail. This caused the boom to swing around violently but with some quick work with the topping lift and various lines we managed to tame it and bring it back under control. The vang is controlled by hydraulics and pneumatics and it appeared that a seal had failed between the two.
Unfortunately this meant that we couldn’t use the mainsail for the rest of the trip and also meant the end of our trip to New York. We decided it would be better to sail to Newport, Rhode Island where we hoped we would have a good chance of getting the vang repaired.
posted by Col and Kate at 2:33 AM
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