8 nautical miles
The wind started off as just a gentle breeze of around 10 knots then quickly rose to between 12 and 15 knots, which is a moderate breeze of Beaufort 4: King Malu was flying along at 5 knots. Although the wind was in that range the sea state had not grown to anything like one might expect for that wind speed because the day before we had almost no wind at all. We had full genoa and full main up. Tim remarked that it felt like she was sailing better having cleaned and put new anti-fouling on the hull. The growth wasn't that bad so it is probably just psychological.
The wind was from the north and therefore quite cold. I had on my Gill offshore jacket, Tim hand on a light sailing jacket and Jacob was in t-shirt and shorts. It is pretty obvious who feels the cold the most and who feels it the least. I also put on a knitted beanie to try to keep my head warm.
Keeping warm was the order of the day, so Tim went below and turned on the generator to make some coffee. That was something I was really looking forward to. I was sitting at the wheel and suddenly the wind comes up to over 25 knots, King Malu starts heeling and the autopilot fights to maintain course with a large course correction. Just at that point Tim turns the switch turn off the generator. At the same instant all the Navionics including the autopilot dies. I grab the helm, which was still turned significantly leeward and turn her back into the wind to reduce the heeling. Tim quickly comes on deck to drop the main and partly furl the genoa so we are sailing under reduced sail.
With Tim at the helm I then go below to try to find out why we have lost Navionics power. Nothing seems to be wrong. All connections look like they are still good. The sudden high wind had blown over one of the solar cells and Tim wondered if that had shorted something and made it quit. I didn't think so, but as I was checking the switch on the solar Tim shouted that power had come back. What I had done was to cross feed the domestic and navionics bank so we were now using the domestic power for navionics, which isolated the fault to somewhere in the navionics bank. We had two 1/2/both switches, which means we can quickly reroute power from the domestic bank either to navionics or to engine/generator start.
We checked the outboard motor and it started with no problem, but because there was nothing obvious
we turned for home. It might be a minor problem, but it would be good to check it out. The wind was still around 25 knots (Bft 6) and the waves coming up and this was rattling King Malu quite a bit. Suddenly the snap shackle on the genoa sheet flies loose. I try to hold her on course, but we have now lost motive power, so she will start to spin. With the tension suddenly released on the sheets and the furling line they somewhat beautifully tangle themselves.
Tim goes for'ard to try to reattach the genoa sheet, while I try to sort out the mess between the furling line and the sheet. Jacob was helping Tim. Both have life jackets on, but not safety tethers. As King Malu spins and was bucking I think to myself that this was not the place I really want to pick up a man-overboard. The furling line and genoa sheet suddenly untangle themselves resulting in the genoa flying out with full power, Tim still holding it, nearly falling over Jacob and then letting go so now the full genoa was flapping over the yacht and watching this I was doubly concerned about someone going overboard.
I furl the genoa and Tim manages to attach the sheet and we are back to stable again. Both incidents happened in a matter if minutes and although it was concerning it was actually encouraging to see how we acted as a crew together. For the future we will always have safety tethers on deck when the wind reaches 15 knots so that they are readily available should we need them if the wind comes up suddenly.
There were a couple of rips in the genoa along the leach, so when we get back to the marina we call Charmiane to arrange for her to put in a sacrificial cloth along the leech which will strengthen it a lot. The sail itself was basically sound. The problem was that the leech was unprotected for some time while the previous owner had removed the sacrificial cloth and so it has now become sun damaged.
On the way back in we see another yacht Daphne coming out. Some of the crew are in wet weather gear and some not. A few minutes after we are moored we see Daphne coming back in. This time all the crew are in wet weather gear!
By midday the wind had dropped back to 12-15 knots again and Lauren came down to join us for lunch and Tim rustled up a lunch of scrambled eggs, sausages and Cyprus bread. Although the incidents lost us some sailing time - we had expected to get to Cape Pila and back - it was actually encouraging to see how well King Malu behaved in these conditions and to have given the crew a chance to try out some minor incidents in what the Beaufort scale describes as a 'Strong breeze'.
After lunch we fitted the final pieces to make the cockpit look complete - a couple of Pioneer marine speakers. Since we had removed the old ones we had gaffer taped up the hole and two ugly gaffer tape pads were not exactly the most beautiful... actually they were eyesores! Now with the bimini and splash hood finished the gaffer taped looked even worse. Should have been a few minutes job since the old speakers were the same size - 8 inch - but... the original ones had a wider lip so we had to enlarge the holes in the cockpit to take the new speakers.
Tim remarked about the trip these speakers had taken: You couldn't buy 8 inch speakers in the UK, so we had bought them in the USA and had them delivered to a colleague of his there. They were manufactured in Japan before even getting to the USA. Tim's colleague had brought them to a business meeting in London where he had collected them and taken them on their final leg to Cyprus.
I must admit the sound quality of these speakers is superb.
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