good morning folks. ive made it back and had time to recover mostly so ill let everyone get their laughs in now, here's the rest of the story.
prepared to leave from mandeville on thursday, bill evans was graciously helpful getting us everything we needed to be on our way, leroy and i checked the fuel tank and both agreed that it seemed to be full (oops) so we head out onto ponchatrain happy as a clam and the auto pilot even worked so far so good, eat lunch and socialize some while we check everything over, 2 hours into this on our way to the bascule bridge the motor stops. weve lost prime and fight to get her going again for a few hours while the admiral drives under main only in very light air, after a frustrating failure to prime the little yanmar we give up and throw a 110 jib on the front and head to the bridge as the sun is setting, the auto pilot is now shredding its belt and making steering a chore by jamming the wheel. during this configuration change we notice that ballerina sails powerfully but seems to walk a little (turns out the steering cables are frightfully loose, allowing the rudder to travel slightly) so as we near the bascule bridge area leroy (our delivery man) sends me down to get some sleep, as im starting to drift off i hear him come downstairs and hail the bridge operators, then i hear the bridge alarms and we tack and jybe while the spans open, as we proceed into the crossing i feel the rig slacken and some muffled conversation between leroy and the admiral right before the boat lurches and i begin to hear what i can only describe as a titanic vs. iceberg sound scraping down the port side while im in the v-berth, half asleep i come topside to find that we are adrift with slack sails coming through the wind in the middle of the spans, leroy informs me that we have no steering and plan to make our best attempt to tie up to the far side of the breakwater, i look up and cant figure out how we didnt take the mast out on the train span above us judging by the path we had to take. after tying up to the breakwater we break open the binnacle to find that the chain has jumped the sprocket in the edson pedestal so we manage to get it back right and inform the bridge attendants that we are ready to leave (still no motor), thankfully the current is exactly what we needed and we push the bow off with the stern held fast and hoist the jib to spin the nose around towards slidel then up with the main before we get to the other side of the breakwater and a few tacks then we are out and decide to limp to the slidell yacht club to lick our wounds.
slidell: not 5 minutes after pulling into an empty slip in slidell harbor we had the little yanmar back to bangin away in its hole, the admiral (michaela) made the point that if it hadnt stopped we could have been in a much worse scenario when/if the steering went out. after some sleep leroy called his friend mark palermo and we did a few things on deck to tidy up while he drove to the yacht club, i finally cleaned the prop (in need of some reconstruction due to age, geez its a tiny little two blade thing), assessed the hull from its impact the night before only to find that there isnt a scratch on her save for the bow light (gone) and the pulpit is just slightly bent. mark was nice enough to give us some breakfast and rectify our lighting situation. the running joke now is "bridges tremble in fear when ballerina draws near" preparing to leave i find the only real evidence of the nature of the previous nights struggle, chunks of the breakwater boards lying on the deck in the bow. pressing on from slidell we continue without incident to the trestle bridge at the end of the rigolettes after passing this span we proceed to beat into the wind motor sailing on lake bgourne (sp) during this leg i got to sit in the captains chair and really watch ballerina stretch her legs using the wheel lock and sail trim she beat most of the way across the lake without me touching the wheel once, beautiful. as the afternoon progressed we decided to make an overnight push and take full advantage of the flat water and favorable breeze, running the little yanmar throttled back and hoping for enough fuel to make lulu's in the land cut. during the night we surely made phenomenal time, i took over driving at 5am ish saturday morning after a largely uneventful night (lots and lots of trawlers in Mississippi sound) mobile bay treated me to a nice run that at times looked like i was in a drug induced state, the water seemed to be like mercury and the stars remained in a black sky behind me as i sailed into the blooming sunrise. flipper came and guided me to the land cut after approaching the port stern rail and making sure i knew he was there (eyeballing me till i acknowledged him), made the land cut and lulu's and topped up the tank, our fuel calculations said that we had been burning approximately 1 quart an hour while motor sailing. now with a full tank and no breeze we cracked the throttle wide and made breakfast on perdido bay headed for home, rounding into big lagoon the wind made an appearance and we recorded the trips fastest speed over ground of 7.8 on the gps. pushing hard we caught our friends on shaman in the pensacola pass area and proceeded back home to bayou chico, slowing to watch a little of the wforc action on our way by. arrival at the home dock was around 430pm on saturday, ballerina has been a good boat to us all and we thank her for delivering us safely.
prepared to leave from mandeville on thursday, bill evans was graciously helpful getting us everything we needed to be on our way, leroy and i checked the fuel tank and both agreed that it seemed to be full (oops) so we head out onto ponchatrain happy as a clam and the auto pilot even worked so far so good, eat lunch and socialize some while we check everything over, 2 hours into this on our way to the bascule bridge the motor stops. weve lost prime and fight to get her going again for a few hours while the admiral drives under main only in very light air, after a frustrating failure to prime the little yanmar we give up and throw a 110 jib on the front and head to the bridge as the sun is setting, the auto pilot is now shredding its belt and making steering a chore by jamming the wheel. during this configuration change we notice that ballerina sails powerfully but seems to walk a little (turns out the steering cables are frightfully loose, allowing the rudder to travel slightly) so as we near the bascule bridge area leroy (our delivery man) sends me down to get some sleep, as im starting to drift off i hear him come downstairs and hail the bridge operators, then i hear the bridge alarms and we tack and jybe while the spans open, as we proceed into the crossing i feel the rig slacken and some muffled conversation between leroy and the admiral right before the boat lurches and i begin to hear what i can only describe as a titanic vs. iceberg sound scraping down the port side while im in the v-berth, half asleep i come topside to find that we are adrift with slack sails coming through the wind in the middle of the spans, leroy informs me that we have no steering and plan to make our best attempt to tie up to the far side of the breakwater, i look up and cant figure out how we didnt take the mast out on the train span above us judging by the path we had to take. after tying up to the breakwater we break open the binnacle to find that the chain has jumped the sprocket in the edson pedestal so we manage to get it back right and inform the bridge attendants that we are ready to leave (still no motor), thankfully the current is exactly what we needed and we push the bow off with the stern held fast and hoist the jib to spin the nose around towards slidel then up with the main before we get to the other side of the breakwater and a few tacks then we are out and decide to limp to the slidell yacht club to lick our wounds.
slidell: not 5 minutes after pulling into an empty slip in slidell harbor we had the little yanmar back to bangin away in its hole, the admiral (michaela) made the point that if it hadnt stopped we could have been in a much worse scenario when/if the steering went out. after some sleep leroy called his friend mark palermo and we did a few things on deck to tidy up while he drove to the yacht club, i finally cleaned the prop (in need of some reconstruction due to age, geez its a tiny little two blade thing), assessed the hull from its impact the night before only to find that there isnt a scratch on her save for the bow light (gone) and the pulpit is just slightly bent. mark was nice enough to give us some breakfast and rectify our lighting situation. the running joke now is "bridges tremble in fear when ballerina draws near" preparing to leave i find the only real evidence of the nature of the previous nights struggle, chunks of the breakwater boards lying on the deck in the bow. pressing on from slidell we continue without incident to the trestle bridge at the end of the rigolettes after passing this span we proceed to beat into the wind motor sailing on lake bgourne (sp) during this leg i got to sit in the captains chair and really watch ballerina stretch her legs using the wheel lock and sail trim she beat most of the way across the lake without me touching the wheel once, beautiful. as the afternoon progressed we decided to make an overnight push and take full advantage of the flat water and favorable breeze, running the little yanmar throttled back and hoping for enough fuel to make lulu's in the land cut. during the night we surely made phenomenal time, i took over driving at 5am ish saturday morning after a largely uneventful night (lots and lots of trawlers in Mississippi sound) mobile bay treated me to a nice run that at times looked like i was in a drug induced state, the water seemed to be like mercury and the stars remained in a black sky behind me as i sailed into the blooming sunrise. flipper came and guided me to the land cut after approaching the port stern rail and making sure i knew he was there (eyeballing me till i acknowledged him), made the land cut and lulu's and topped up the tank, our fuel calculations said that we had been burning approximately 1 quart an hour while motor sailing. now with a full tank and no breeze we cracked the throttle wide and made breakfast on perdido bay headed for home, rounding into big lagoon the wind made an appearance and we recorded the trips fastest speed over ground of 7.8 on the gps. pushing hard we caught our friends on shaman in the pensacola pass area and proceeded back home to bayou chico, slowing to watch a little of the wforc action on our way by. arrival at the home dock was around 430pm on saturday, ballerina has been a good boat to us all and we thank her for delivering us safely.
