An Emergency and a Mystical Groundhog Day

An Emergency and a Mystical Groundhog Day Had it not been for a serious breakage, 16 September could have been called the only Groundhog Day of our lives. Having put the clocks forward by an hour yesterday, Thursday, 16 September, we woke up the next morning to find it was Thursday, 16 September all over again. Or so our weather-and-time station reported. Somewhere inside it there is a memory programmed with time zones and the International Date Line, but apparently there is a glitch in the programming, because we have not crossed the Date Line yet. #butwerENotsure. What is this all about, anyway? Have you read Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days? In it, one Phileas Fogg has to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days, or else he is done for. And so, after enduring a sea of misadventures, he misses the deadline by just a few hours. Then it turns out that an extra day has appeared from somewhere, and Phileas wins the wager. The trick is that when you travel around the Earth from west to east, you steadily put the clocks forward, one hour at a time, and after one full circuit those skipped hours add up to an entire 24-hour day. You gain that day by travelling east, and lose it by circumnavigating westwards. At a certain point—namely, around the meridian running through the Bering Strait—not only the hour changes, but the date as well. In short, the date on our clock has already changed, and we are living through Thursday, 16 September for the second time. And it fully lives up to the proud name of Groundhog Day. This is the hardest part of an ocean passage: every day is the same. It may be harder or easier depending on the weather. In the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, with no heater and the wind blowing in from Antarctica, Groundhog Day is exceptionally bleak. An Emergency And that is how our second Thursday in a row would have remained, had we not found ourselves becalmed and taken the opportunity to inspect the boat. The captain tightened various troublesome screws, shaved his head and, while inspecting the windvane self-steering gear, discovered the most serious breakage in our eight years at sea: the steel bracket holding the rudder blade—a plate 5 cm wide and 5 mm thick—had cracked in two places. On one side, the entire assembly had been torn away completely. Such were the consequences of that brutal first week of storms, waves and drifting. The breakage determined how we would spend the next 24 hours. Wearing a wetsuit, the captain hung over the stern with his nether regions in the sea. He unbolted the windvane rudder, and we hoisted it onto the deck with a winch (the rudder, that is—the captain climbed back aboard by himself). Then we scraped the flora and fauna off the rudder blade with a putty knife and sluiced it down with bucketfuls of seawater, after which the captain spent until 4 a.m. sawing and bending metal plates—first on deck, then, once it started raining, inside the deckhouse. To find the plates, we had to take the forecabin apart. All manner of metal saws and drill bits screeched, metal filings cut the skipper’s hands, and we passed him the ammunition and cooked dinner. At 4 a.m. Andrey went to bed; at 8 he got up and carried on. He fitted two steel patches to each side, drilled and tapped eight holes, screwed in eight bolts and cut them down. Fortunately, the calm lasted almost until victory was ours. Lady Mary was being set southwards, but the valiant captain, lowered overboard on a winch, managed to reinstall the windvane rudder. During the day the wind shifted northerly, and now we are once again battling along on our beloved close-hauled course, expecting it to strengthen from 20 to 30 knots. The wind-in-our-faces will blow for at least three days. We are already bucking unpleasantly. Other Matters and Weather Delighted by the good news, the girls baked an apple cake this morning, and now they are conjuring up a pilaf together. The main thing is not to overeat at dinner, or we will feel absolutely wretched. In between jobs, we do schoolwork and write articles. It will probably be warmer tonight, although at 5 p.m. it is already only +8°C outside. This morning it was +8°C inside the yacht, and yesterday it was even +7°C. Honestly? We are utterly fed up with the cold. Our movements are sluggish; we crawl out from under the blankets reluctantly. Fortunately, the sun shines every day, even if only briefly. If only we could get north sooner. But for now, the headwind and the Southern Ocean will not let us go. Once again we are losing latitude, slowly slipping from the 47th parallel towards the 48th. Friends, thank you for being with us! For worrying about us, writing wonderful letters through the feedback form on the website (Vladimir Kurt, thank you for your letter), and leaving warm comments on our posts. We read everything; we cannot reply personally, but we are giving you all a big hug. Greetings from all of us at 47°42′ S, 172°25′ E. Thank you to all the wonderful people helping to replenish the expedition budget via PayPal and YooMoney . We thank everyone for your support and kind words in the comments. Where are we right now? See the Route tab. It displays the track from the RockSTAR Iridium360 tracker provided by MVS Telecom.