Broken rudder, but the journey continues!

They say that in F1 the most important component is the nut holding the steering wheel. Goldie's equivalent is the nut holding the rudder pin in position.

Yesterday afternoon Ben and Chris, whose cabin as at the back of the boat, noticed a clanking sound and discovered the nut holding the rudder pin had sheared off. (It's below the bottom bracket in this image). 2 months in the Indian Ocean is not just physically punishing on the rowers, but Goldie has taken a battering too!

Fortunately, Ben and Chris were able to act quickly and get the pin back in and MacGyver a solution using cable ties and rope to hopefully hold the pin in position. What they don't know is how much pin is actually in the bottom bracket.

The crew are safe and Goldie is back under way and making good speed. The coastguard has been alerted and I have turned the tracker frequency up to hourly so we can monitor them more closely. However strong following winds are forecast so let's hope the pin holds!

We are awaiting confirmation from the authorities that they will be allowed to land at Grand Baie. Goldie is hard to manoeuvre at the best of times and if they were to lose the rudder close to shore with reefs, etc around it would be a very real threat to the crew's safety. Fingers crossed that common sense prevails. The extra 4 hours hugging the coast before entering Port Louis, a busy container port, with the risk of losing steering his not something the crew want hanging over them after 70 days at sea!

The shore support crew and the crew's families are now in Mauritius. As I write this on Monday morning, Goldie and the boys are <130Nm from Mauritius and we are expecting them to arrive Wednesday afternoon/evening local time - we are 4hrs behind AWST (Perth) time which is what our stats dashboard uses. As they get close I will up the tracker frequency so that those of you following from home around the world can closely track their progress along with us. Comms permitting, we also plan to live stream via the IOR23 Facebook page.

Peter

Shore Support Crew