Return to Hobart for more repairs
Sailing schoolboy Mike Perham, 17, hoping to become the world’s youngest circumnavigator has suffered more problems with his Open 50, Totallymoney.com
He had to return to Hobart after she started taking in water.
Here is his latest missive:
‘I departed from Tassie yesterday morning after clearing customs and after a bit of help from a motorboat, Totallymoney.com and I were on our way out of Storm Bay with 10knots of wind, which made for pretty graceful sailing. I felt great to be off after only a few days here in Hobart, and all was going to plan.
BUT?when I ducked my head into the aft compartment to have a check on the rudder bearing I was shocked to see loads of water sloshing about. I quickly bailed out the water and, after a closer inspection I could see water coming over the lower bearing and into the boat.
I phoned the marina, spun round and headed straight back. Psychologically, this was a pretty hard thing to do; I never thought I’d be sailing back up this river again.
Looking on the bright side, it was a lovely sail up the river in the early evening light and I arrived back at the marina just as it fell dark. I was given a warm welcome by Don, Margie along with a few others.
We removed the top cap over the bearing and it was immediately apparent that the bearing wasn’t correctly aligned anymore. By this time it was pretty late, so after canting the boat over slightly to starboard, we retired to our beds and arranged to remove it this morning.
This has now been done and after taking it apart it all looked really good. We’re going to re-assemble it all now, put the rudder back on and then trial the boat tomorrow to have a good check of it. It’s good news and bad news that we can’t really find anything wrong?’