It would appear that TSPS member David Devlin, so unfortunately waylaid by a coral bommie (outcrop) on May 15th at Faraulep in Micronesia, has completed the temporary repairs necessary to his vessel’s skeg and rudder and is about to depart for Yap, a sail of about 385 miles. There, he will complete the repairs at a boatyard before continuing on to Australia. This is from a recent update on his blog:

Thomas, Chan and Chan’s son Melvin navigated for us yesterday on a nail bitting trip out to sea through the lagoon’s middle entrance. It is a dog leg’s entrance and we found it both difficult to navigate going out and then returning in to. Think we will use the narrow but straight entrance we used when we first came in when it comes to leaving.

My mouth was dry and I was shaking the entire time. Not only concern over hitting again but concern over the repairs holding up. We motored around a bit and found water in the bilge. Emptied it and found it did not return. I have had this happen before. There are so many places for water to get trapped and once you get out to sea and rocked around it starts appearing in the bilge. We then put up the main sail 3rd reef and ran with the wind toward Yap doing 3.4knots. The wind was between 15 and 20 knots and the waves 3 to 4 feet. We turned around came back through the lagoon entrance, attached back up to our anchor and celebrated with 3 not so very cold but very enjoyable bottles of wine with our new friends.

There has been no leak whatsoever since. I have therefore decided to sail to Yap. The earliest would be tomorrow afternoon but still a few things to get done so more likely Thursday. All weather permitting.

We will lodge our sail plan with Guam Coast Guard and also Australian Maritime and won’t go if they say don’t. We plan to only use sail to steady the boat to reduce pressure on rudder. Will keep our sea anchor ready to deploy from the bow should we get strong winds or a storm.It is nearly 400 nautical miles so we are bound to hit a couple of squalls.

I am not going to write all details here of our repairs or the how we plan to sail to avoid a barrage of arm chair advice and comments. I have chosen to work with 4 good people on this and they have devoted a lot of their time. We have spent a lot of time discussing and debating every detail and I feel confident we have done the best we can and the boat will withstand the journey.

David

All of us at TSPS wish David an easy and safe journey.