We have now been cruising with our test antiroll tank for over a month. I have purposely taken the boat into conditions that I would normally try to avoid. One of those instances was crossing the Straight of Juan de Fuca from Port Townsend to Sydney, B.C. It can be calm, but even then, it is likely that there will be swells coming in from the Pacific. Our crossing was sort of "medium" conditions for the Straight. 2-3' waves on a 6 second period. Underneath was the swell, but it only made itself known when it coincided with the wind waves.
We had a mini-disaster during the crossing, but it wasn't really related to the antiroll tank. I had changed our hollow fiberglass mast to a tabernacle mast so that it could be folded downs when entering our newly acquired boat house. The hinge was strong enough. The lock down mechanisms were strong enough. What wasn't strong enough was the thickness of the fiberglass mast (and I didn't properly reinforce).
I had some questions about the PO installation of the Garmin radar dome on the antenna (with a custom stainless mount). I wasn't sure if the original mast was intended to be merely decorative. I had already reinforced the bottom bolts where the motion of the mast had begun to wear larger holes in the fiberglass. When I removed the mast for cutting and adding the tabernacle, I was surprised at how light the Garmin dome was, and that lead me to not super-reinforce the newly installed hinge.
In purposely getting into "test conditions" for the antiroll tank, I put plenty of strain on the unstayed mast. And so the hinge failed in the Straight. The mast fell onto the solar panel, but not much damage. Even though the rolling motion had been reduced, the strain was still too much for my tabernacle design (or lack of design). The top of the mast was then sistered to the stub on the deck. It was secured with duct tape. Radar was still functional, but anchor light was not. We seldom have other boats in the remote anchorages we chose (most don't even have names), but still we left on the aft cockpit light at night. Sort of like leaving on the porch light.
That's our new Starlink antenna on the deck to the right of the mast. Mindboggling that I'm typing this while at anchor in a foggy little cove SW of Bella Bella.
But the antiroll tank was a sucess. Our rolls didn't hardly register on my recording inclinometer. Below is a photo of the tank installed. It has "8 inch inspection ports" on each end, not so much for inspection or filling, but because I needed to access the interior inorder to do the final epoxy fillets to construct the tank. Right now, the ports are simply sitting in their openings. I didn't have time to finalize the tank before we left.
You can also see the hinge on my tabernacle mast in the down position in the lower left corner. That is the hinge that failed to handle the rocking motion in the Straight, despite the rocking motion being greatly reduced by the tank. How much it was reduced will be the topic of the next post.
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