Pictures of broken things....

[capnsensible]

This is the wire end of a headsail halyard. It decided to relax some 650 miles short of St. Lucia. Once alongside, it took the most Excellent Rodney Bay Rigger around 8 minutes and not a lot of money to repair with two swages for safety.
But about an hour with our youngest crew dangling at the top of the mast to re thread it!

Full marks though to Selden furling mainsails. We kept up our 6 knot average under main only and proved that with care, such a sail can easily and safely rolled in and out on a broad reach. :encouragement:

Mid following Caribbean sea with lots of it trying to visit us in the cockpit..... which swamps the engine control panel and gives a permanent beep. Engine running, bilge slowly fills. Check Keel Bolts!!!! then hull valves, then engine exhaust. Yup, right on the through hull, the bend in the pipe as installed finally splits.
Solution. Stop donk. Stuff outlet from over transom with plastic bags. Cut back pipe. Easy especially when you have a 19 year old crew to stuff into the transom space. Remove old bit from through hull. Difficult. Fit hose back on. Recover bags and crew. Restart donk. Solved. Remarkably during the hour or so the diagnosis and repair took, we were still going in exactly the right direction.


Flat batteries as in expired. No pictures, they look the same.

Alternator bracket broken, sorry no pics of the most excellent Mindelo welder repair.

Dont you love boats!

 

[capnsensible]

Oh, please feel free to expand on this with your favourite broken things and how you saw and overcame!

At the moment Im doing the millionth (or so it seems) repair to my inflatable dinghy........

 

[TQA]

Well let's see after 9 years of fairly trouble free cruising I had the following

High resistance developed in the swaged starter cable. Result no engine melted lead connection on battery small fire and had to sail onto the anchor. This was in Rodney bay St Lucia.



A week or so later the starter died had it repaired in Martinique at vast expense including hire cars to have it fail in Dominica. So have to sail into the anchorage again. Buy new starter motor from the USA and have it Fedexed down to Dominica. No reliable mechanics are available so I lash my creaky old bones into action and working left handed and mostly by feel I have removed refiited removed and fitted new.



Sailing from the Saintes to Guadeloupe in fairly rorty reinforced trades the fitting at the bottom of my inner forestay fails. Fortunately the staysail has a wire luff and things stayed together. Less than 6 months earlier I had paid a rigger to inspect my rig and I am somewhat annoyed that he missed the obvious cracks but as it is at deck level I should have spotted it myself.



So I get on to the local rigger in Guadeloupe who scratches his head and says " non ".

I hire a car and tour the chandlers in Point a Pitre but no luck. I buy a fitting that looks to be the same but is not threaded and would need to have the shank swage down to a suitable size to take a thread of the correct size.



Up to Antigua where there is a rigging business famed for fixing cruisers boats but not mine. The boss looks at my fitting and says he is not prepared to swage it down in his machine.

Hey Ho my flight is booked to Salt Lake City for my annual break from cruising in paradise to sample some skiing in Alta/Park City/Snowbasin etc. I had bought this pesky inner forestay fitting with me to SLC and found an excellent blacksmith at the Wasatch Forge called Matt Danielson who had a go at forging down the diameter of the fitting. He was a little unsure of the suitability of the grade of stainless but as always as he does what a good smith does he got it hot and hit it hard. I still had to get the thread cut but that was easyy.



My LPG gas bottles live in a transom locker and there is a remotely operated solenoid. I go to make my morning coffee press to activate the solenoid and there is no click. I was expecting it to fail as it was in a poor state and badly rusted but a half hearted attempt soon convinced me that something was going to break before it came free so I would need some extra fittings and maybe a new regulator. Hey Ho I was in Guadeloupe and the one thing the French definitely do not do is stock imperial thread gas fittings.



So it is wait until I get to Dominica where the local gas man has a all sorts of imperial fittings and a new regulator. I have a new solenoid which I bought online for less the 10 $ US had I bought it from the local chandler it would have been 95 $ US.

I like the quiet places in this world and sometimes am the only boat in the anchorage which suits me just fine. I often have a swim before breakfast and rely on my transom mounted 4 rung telescopic ladder to get back on board. It is just olng enough and I definitely need all 4 rungs so when this happens I have a problem.



So it is buy a new ladder 49 $ US online and 289 $ US from the local chandler for EXACTLY the same ladder.

I have a planing OB Rib set up and was on my way into town when the motor quits. The hose fuel fitting on the engine is leaking. Now I can cope with a hose leak as I carry a Leatherman tool and some zip ties but it is the actual metal male and female connection that is leaking, I try holding it on but that does not work. Hey Ho time to get the dinghy anchor and long rode out but wait we are being blown down onto a fellow cruiser a few strokes with a paddle and and I can hang on to the side and blag a tow back. Back at the boat I remove the metal male and female connection and connect my external tank hose directly to the internal fuel filter and we are back in action.



As I was typing this my Caframo fan that is keeping me cool slows down and rattles I know from previous experience that this is a death rattle and it will soon stop which it duly does. Hey Ho I check my spares locker but am forced to steal the one from the forecabin. Just as well my guests have left.

There is another minor happening that is making my normally fairly presentable boat look like an abandoned wreck my Sunbrella dodger and some runoff areas associated with it have gone green with an abundant and flourishing algae culture. I have been told to apply bleach but think I will wait until I get to somewhere they have a good cleaning crew associated with the Moorings charter boats. They will know what to use. BTW Patio Magic is not available out here.



What else both bilge pumps, shower sump pump apparently a 40 year old Henderson Mk 2 toilet outlet hose [ note to self check for spare duck valve and buy a spare straight outlet as the local chandlers only stock the 90 degree ones pressure cooker seal] and last which is yet to be fixed the endless loop on my stackpack that pulls the zip needs replacing as the line cover is fraying.

 

[capnsensible]

My word, why do we have boats??

Im not gonna list everything over the last 20 years, would take up too much space!!

I always remind myself not to fix everything coz that means something else is about to break.......:ambivalence:

Bet you felt good getting a result on some of those, especially the rigging.

 

[Iliade]

If you have got any more plastic covers over wire swages I'd take the leatherman to them.

 

[lonederanger]

My Beautiful Holland windvane that I made one winter. She lasted 15,000 miles , I think she knew she was coming home and valiantly fought on through so many gales but finally 300 miles from the Lizard she could take no more and basically tore herself in half. It was a long-long way to hand steer.

 

[vyv_cox]

Mid following Caribbean sea with lots of it trying to visit us in the cockpit..... which swamps the engine control panel and gives a permanent beep. Engine running, bilge slowly fills. Check Keel Bolts!!!! then hull valves, then engine exhaust. Yup, right on the through hull, the bend in the pipe as installed finally splits.
Solution. Stop donk. Stuff outlet from over transom with plastic bags. Cut back pipe. Easy especially when you have a 19 year old crew to stuff into the transom space. Remove old bit from through hull. Difficult. Fit hose back on. Recover bags and crew. Restart donk. Solved. Remarkably during the hour or so the diagnosis and repair took, we were still going in exactly the right direction.

I had a persistent water leak into the engine bilge that appeared to only occur when the engine was running. I spent hours watching the engine but was unable to find it. Eventually discovered an almost identical failure to this one, between the silencer and skin fitting in the lazarette. Years of vibration had ultimately resulted in fatigue failure of the wires and rubber.

 

[zoidberg]

I s'pose the very temporary answer to recurrence of that sort of problem is the right-sized tapered bung on a long cord.... which I now have, thanks.

 

[johnalison]

You don't have to make such heroic efforts to wreck your boat mid-ocean. some of us can manage it in the safety of a Dutch canal with only the slightest fault. The gear-selector cable parted within the nut while we are approaching a bridge at Burdaard. Given the choice of colliding with the bridge or the bank I chose the bank, resulting in some gelcoat loss to the bow but no damage to the rockery. The cable was about 13 yrs old and maybe should have been changed, but inspection wouldn't have spotted the fault.

 

[capnsensible]

So true! After a near 16 day crossing, the throttle cable snapped on our way into Rodney Bay. As it was dark oclock, i anchored with one of my crew with head in engine operating throttle in local.

Tootled in and got a new one in the morning. Actually, did gear one too whilst at it just in case.

 

[vyv_cox]

You don't have to make such heroic efforts to wreck your boat mid-ocean. some of us can manage it in the safety of a Dutch canal with only the slightest fault. The gear-selector cable parted within the nut while we are approaching a bridge at Burdaard. Given the choice of colliding with the bridge or the bank I chose the bank, resulting in some gelcoat loss to the bow but no damage to the rockery. The cable was about 13 yrs old and maybe should have been changed, but inspection wouldn't have spotted the fault.

Classic fatigue failure of bolts. They always fail at the first turn of the thread, where the stress is highest. 90% of bolt tension is taken on the first thread. Undertightening is the most likely cause.

 

[johnalison]

Classic fatigue failure of bolts. They always fail at the first turn of the thread, where the stress is highest. 90% of bolt tension is taken on the first thread. Undertightening is the most likely cause.

That's funny. Almost everything else on the boat was overtightened by a bunch of Swedish Vikings. I didn't find the nut until two years after the event, hence the muck.

 

[DJE]

When we had two teenagers sailing dinghies there was a lot of this sort of thing.

 

[Daydream believer]

At the end of last season we motored from Ostend to the standing mast route all the way to Dordrecht & back to Ostend. Less than 5 hours sailing. On leaving Ostend we had to motor all the way to Bradwell as zero wind.
On the way back the metal bracket supporting the engine on to the rubber engine mounting broke, allowing the engine to drop 2 inches & jamming the alternator which was fitted to the same bracket.
Where did it decide to break?
Approaching the pontoon in Bradwell!!! Just managed to have enough way on to moor up.
How's that for luck????
Cost of a new bearer circa £ 70-00 from Volspec.
I sourced a piece of steel for £ 10-00 & made a new one complete, but still had to pay £ 120-00 to get the alternator repaired. However, the electrician reported the regulator defective, so that got fixed at the same time rather than half way through the 2019 season.

 

[johnalison]

At the end of last season we motored from Ostend to the standing mast route all the way to Dordrecht & back to Ostend. Less than 5 hours sailing. On leaving Ostend we had to motor all the way to Bradwell as zero wind.
On the way back the metal bracket supporting the engine on to the rubber engine mounting broke, allowing the engine to drop 2 inches & jamming the alternator which was fitted to the same bracket.
Where did it decide to break?
Approaching the pontoon in Bradwell!!! Just managed to have enough way on to moor up.
How's that for luck????
Cost of a new bearer circa £ 70-00 from Volspec.
I sourced a piece of steel for £ 10-00 & made a new one complete, but still had to pay £ 120-00 to get the alternator repaired. However, the electrician reported the regulator defective, so that got fixed at the same time rather than half way through the 2019 season.

Great planning. On our last cruise in the Mystere almost everything broke. First I thought were were sinking but it was just a hole in the hose from the cockpit drain, impossible to get at so I just closed off the seacock. Then the flexible water tank split when we were in Honfleur, repaired with the Avon repair kit. Minor problems continued until we were crossing the Thames Estuary in a rising wind and the roller-reefing gear stripped a Tufnol block, solved by taking the boom off the gooseneck and rolling the lot. As a final insult we hit a wave just off Bradwell and I watched as the masthead light carved a parabola through the evening sky before landing in the water about fifty feet away.

 

[johnphilip]

Picture of pushrods from our VP 2020D. One hell of a row when motoring about 3 miles from Ramsgate and the one snapped. Sailed slowly into Ramsgate, anchored in outer harbour and workboat helpfully pulled us into a marina berth a bit later.
As we had just had a cracked head replaced and had been worried that a con rod might have been damaged and had now given up the ghost this turned out to be a miraculously easy repair rather than the new engine we had thought to be facing.