Vang Repairs

Unfortunately our timing in Newport wasn’t ideal as everyone here was gearing up to the start of the 100th Newport to Bermuda Race. When we started making calls to Hydraulic Companies to ask if they could have a look at our vang we were laughed at as they were all so busy!

Thankfully, our patience paid off and we managed to find a Rigging company, who are registered Navtec (vang make) agents and they agreed to collect the vang on Thursday, if we could take it off. Of course, we agreed as we didn’t think taking it off would be too difficult – how wrong were we!

After half a day of fighting with it we finally got the top pin out. We then just had to drain the hydraulic oil and release the pressure before taking the bottom pin out. Everything was going well until the vang fought back and the hydraulic line blew off, covering us all, including the Owners, in hydraulic oil. It was not a pretty sight. It also went all over the boat and we mean all over the boat! Just when we thought we were getting close to finishing for the day, we had to start washing the boat down, again and again!

We did manage to get the vang off and lowered it into the tender. The vang is about 12ft long and weighs about 80kg so it looked like the tender had sprouted a bowsprit! The hydraulic guys are hoping to have it back to us by early next week – fingers crossed.