Day 7 – 31.01.26

« Rudolfs rescue »

I’m guessing you were waiting for news about what happened when we arrived at Valdivia…well nothing ! The sea state was the same only minor differences, we were surrounded by big cargo ships also avoiding the shallow patches. At some point we were 4 boats taking the same corridor out of the bank but always with a minimum distance of 10 miles between each other. We also passed the Tropic of Capricorn, which we celebrated with a little rhum.

Today started calmly, reading a book, enjoying the sun. At lunchtime we were inside as usual to eat together and « Rudolf » our hydrovane self-steering system was doing his job as usual when suddenly he started acting up, making us jump outside to check what was going on. We couldnt understand why he was struggling to keep us in the right direction and then Lorenzo went up to the system and saw that our Rudolf had lost his rudder ! It was floating behind the boat being dragged in the water at 6,5kts…luckily it had a security line attached to it, we did that before our departure just in case the pin wiggled out and thankfully it had worked out. The only part we lost was the pin that goes through the rudder and the main vertical shaft but we found a replacement pin.

Now was the time for great adventures, so Lorenzo geared up in his life jacket and spinlock clips and ventured down at the back of our now « heaved to » boat (meaning that’s the closest we can get to slowing the boat down with the sails open). It required all of our attention, JB holding onto the lines coming from the lifejacket to assist Lorenzos descent and me holding the hydrovanes rudder as close as possible to where it was supposed to pop back up on the vertical shaft. Lorenzo descended down into the water till his waist and was holding on with his left hand, with his right, he was directing this rudder back up its shaft, then after many efforts, managed to place the security pin back in. We were all relieved that Mr Rudolf could finally resume his job at keeping us on track again, imagine having to steer at the helm all the way 24/7, that would have been bad ! If that rudder had fallen off it would have sank all the way down to the sea bed 4000m below.

While finishing off this last sentence a 20cm flying fish just jumped into the cockpit ! What a mess, throwing scales, blood and fishy smell everywhere ahah.