Snap! Crackle! Pop!
A sailboat underway is a symphony. There’s the creak of the running rigging and sails, the inevitable tinkle of locker contents as the boat caroms through the waves, and of course the delightful sound of water rushing past the hull at speed.
But one of our basic rules is always listen to the boat, and when a new sharp popping noise started to be heard from somewhere in the aft cabin it had our attention.
There are so many different potential sources for sounds on a boat, and sounds can reverberate through the hull and bulkheads. So it can be a challenge to find out the actual cause of a new noise.
Over the course of a couple of days, we pulled up floorboards, checked aft lockers, explored the battery box, and generally wondered at how something we could easily hear could be so hard to find.
Finally, Angie noticed a faint vibration in the hull near the rudder post, and we eventually found that several of the eight large bolts holding the rudder bearing into the hull had started to loosen. It wasn’t much – just a quarter turn or so snugged them back up and immediately stopped the noise – but the constant working of, and the huge forces on the rudder was enough to start to vibrate them loose.
Steering is one of the most critical systems on a boat, so we’re happy to catch this one early. And monitoring those bolts is now on our steering system checklist.
All’s well aboard.
Day Eight
160nm
21 35.0N 39 03.7W
