08 November 2016 (+12 on UTC)
Dear Friends and Family,
We had a slow night with shifting winds. The winds were strong and light and this morning we went through some squalls. Overall, just a normal day. Today, we\’ve had good winds from the port beam and have been flying along.
This afternoon however, both Nikki and I heard what sounded like a large screw fall from the mast!
This does my stomach lining no good. We both looked up and all around and couldn\’t find a missing anything and the part, whatever it was, went into the ocean so we couldn\’t know for sure if it was critical to keeping our mast up in the air!
About 4 hours later, I noticed that the six screws that hold our boom vang plate to the boom were all loose and one was missing! This is good news.
I tightened three of them, two are stripped and one is gone. That was what we heard \”hit the deck\”. This is not a serious issue and I can just keep an eye on it till we get to Australia. These were re-installed when we had our boom gooseneck fixed in Tahiti, so they\’ve lasted 6000 miles, they should be okay now for another 1500.
If it would have been critical, we would have dropped all sail and motored. Fortunately, it was just a small scare and we\’re just truckin\’ along.
We\’re just under half way to Vanuatu and getting settled into our routine. We hope to arrive at Tanna Island on (our Eastern Hemisphere) Thursday morning, the 10th.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Fiji to Vanuatu
AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/11/08 04:49
LATITUDE: 17-57.16S
LONGITUDE: 174-05.13E
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 8.2
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 18
WIND_DIR: SE
WAVE_HT: 0.5M
WAVE_PER: 6
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 1.6M
SWELL_PER: 6
CLOUDS: 50%
VISIBILITY: 20
BARO: 1012.7
AIR_TEMP: 28.3C