Little gear breakage on board Beetle
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gamayun
I'm happy to participate, too. Ditto on what Mike said about being impressed with Greg and the limited amount of fuel! And also what Greg said about the return being more enjoyable than he had anticipated.
I was intrigued at the reports of significant gear problems across the fleet, both during the race as well as on the return trip.
On board Tiger Beetle I had zero gear breakage on the passage from Tahiti to Oahu, and the single (maintenance) issue on the run from Kauai to Neah Bay was changing out the alternator belt. Other than that, everything on the boat worked properly. I do not know if that is because Beetle is being continuously sailed and therefore maintained, if I've swapped everything that breaks with something that doesn't (just a matter of fact in the cruising world), or if I'm not pushing the boat hard and therefore stuff doesn't break as a result (another artifact of cruising vs racing).
I was very pleased the standing rigging, replaced in Oahu, handled the return trip well and did not require re-tuning mid-ocean to handle stretch. The rigging is dyform which doesn't stretch much relative to 1x19, and I'd loaded it up off Waikiki a half-dozen times on tuning runs, and again checked it following the overnight run from Oahu to Kauai.
The number of autopilot failures on this SSS TransPac seemed significant, far more than I would have expected. Good thing folks had backup(s) to engage and keep their boat moving forward. I did have an Alpha Spectra ram failure on the run from Puerto Vallarta to Nuku Hiva, turns out that was an issue I introduced in the wiring (and have since altered the connection mechanism and that problem cannot happen again - soldered connections are necessary for systems that observe resistance, screw-terminal blocks not allowed!).
I"d be interested to see learn more about the gear issues, particularly autopilot problems, at a wrap-up seminar.
I"m also interested in how folks thought the radio/email net worked for the return trip. From what I saw, the boats with metered bandwidth (SailMail, WinLink) were ok with the radio net recap emails but could not handle multiple emails from individual boats due to the metering. Boats with unlimited (or easy) email connections (Iridium GO, perhaps other mechanisms) had no issues.
- rob/beetle