Weblog april 2020 Eric licking our wound

With our trips into the Southern Ocean and to Antarctica, we are quiteused to heavy weather sailing. The Drake Passage is known for its roughseas, but after some 60 odd crossings in all kinds of conditions, Idon’t remember ever experiencing damage to the ship by the actions ofthe ocean.As I write this, we are still sailing our epic low, which has propelledus for most of a 1000 nautical miles and already for more than 12degrees in latitude. In the first days of our encounter with this lowpressure system, when the winds were highest, we actually received somedamage to the ship. We were hit side on by a wave which must have beenslightly bigger or steeper than the rest. It sounded like we were beinghit by a truck. The result was a bent freeing port, one of the openinggates that let out the water deposited on the main deck by boardingwaves or by sailing the cap rail under water. These freeing ports are designedto open and close to let out excess water on deck.As you can see in the picture, the force of water at speed can beimpressive. The freeing port, made out of 6mm steel plate with an 8mmreinforcing rib welded on the inside, was bent inboard by a good amount.The hinge points had no choice but to follow and they deformed thebulwarks quite a bit in a very localised area. The amount of bending inthe bulwarks is probably a bit too much to fix with the means on board,but we’ll give it a go anyway, when we’re back on starboard tack in theTrade winds.Luckily, no crew members were harmed in the bending of this freeing port.Eric