Final Repairs

Zac with Polish circumnavigator Natsza Caban, St Helena Island

Zac is alive and well on the beautiful island of St Helena as this lovely photo shows. There is much to tell...


Laurence and Hans from Scanmar had been troubleshooting Zac's windvane from afar. If you remember, after steering Zac over half way around the world, it began to slip on his passage from Cape Town to St Helena. Laurence was concerned that the 'slipping' would only worsen on Zac's long leg across the Atlantic. I sent Hans every photo ever taken of the windvane and after careful inspection it became clear to Scanmar that the Monitor must have been hit and damaged, probably by another boat. If Zac was not on board he would not know about it. The most severe problem is that the #26 Pendulum had been bent. It can most certainly be repaired in St.Helena but the Monitor has to be taken off and taken apart at the gears and the pendulum has to be removed and straightened.


Fortunately, the Monitor is made in Stainless, which is very repairable. The pendulum blocks on the Monitor are also mounted incorrectly on the brackets. This can be corrected in 10 minutes but the way they are mounted now there is a lot of line chafe and light air performance is effected.


Hans sent over a detailed email on how to repair the vane. Zac's manual was soaked and unreadable though. No problem, he can get it on line. Well, no he can't, the Internet service is too slow to download large documents. I tried emailing it and ended up cutting and pasting the parts of the manual that were referenced in Hans' email into Facebook since Zac also cannot get on Yahoo to check his email. We still were not able to get Zac access to the imperative printed copy of a diagram however.























Monitor diagram

To make matters worse, Zac began to take the vane apart while still attached to Intrepid instead of detaching the whole thing and moving it inside as Hans instructed. I can hear the comments now....but before you pass judgement on the kid, know that he is alone in a rolly anchorage without a dinghy and felt if he had dismounted the whole thing, he might drop the whole thing in the water. He is moored in 90 feet of water! In his judgement at the time, it was the right thing to do.

The result of this was 15 of 18 bearings and one custom washer fell into the sea. The washer was machined by the now famous, Trevor. Yeah Trevor!! The bearings weren't so easy. Our conversations were tense on top of being crackly and intermittent. Things were not looking good.

Knowing that Zac needed a miracle to pull this off, I sent out a mass email asking for prayer - specifically a miracle. I remember as I typed the words asking myself, "Marianne, do you believe that God can do this?" I did and He did.

By the time Zac woke up in the morning, Natasza Caban had pulled into St Helena. Natasza is a young Polish woman who is attempting to be the first Polish woman to sail around the world alone. Thanks to an anonymous blog commenter (yeah bloggers!) who had been reading her blog, we learned that Natsza also had a Monitor windvane on her boat.

She had the manual (in English- whew!) and some spare bearings. If that is not a miracle, I don't know what is!

I spoke for a while with Zac this (his) evening. He was sitting on the one spot down the beach a ways that has sat phone reception. He had successfully placed the bearings and had a friend to help him finish the repairs and hopefully return the vane to the boat tomorrow.

I told Zac that commenters (not to mention his parents) were getting peeved with him for taking so long and asked what he had to say for himself. He tried to explain what it is like to have your boat in a rolly anchorage with no dinghy - there is no place to land a dinghy at St Helena so he didn't commission his dinghy. Then you have the poor sat phone reception and a big time difference - he is 7 hours later. Then you have slow Internet connection. Then you are asking locals who already have full time jobs to come and help you with your boat. They kindly agree but have to work and find time after work etc.

Could Zac have done things differently? Yes. Could he have done things quicker? Yes. The beautiful thing here though is that Zac is in a place where no one can reasonably fly out to help him. He has to do this himself and it has been a challenge. He has risen to the challenge and not given up because he can't. We sure wish Zac was nearing Grenada right now. We are also proud of the young man he is becoming. We are taking things a day at a time here. Hoping and waiting and encouraging Zac.

We had a fabulous night out at the Westlake Yacht Club before heading over to the screening of Morning Light. the inspiring story of 15 young adults with limited sailing backgrounds who trained for a year to be competitive racers in the Trans Pacific Yacht race. Laurence, Abby, my mom and I all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We met Roy Disney Jr. who is a gifted speaker and passionate sailor who gave great insights and background into this wonderful movie. It will be out on DVD in June so you have to check it out.

Update soon...

Marianne