The wind generator - which must weigh 30lb - managed to jump two foot into the air in last night's breeze and remove itself from its mast. On its way to destruction it managed to take a chunk our of the windvane and totally trash the Aquasignal masthead light. An expensive little puff really.
Simple arithmetic shows that for the cost of wintering ashore here and repairing the damage we could have kept the boat in La Graciosa and bought three or four return flights from Glasgow to Lanzarote . . .
Here's a perverse thing - Isla Graciosa with snow . . .
sorry to hear that nick. was the genny in operational mode when it happened ?
i`m about to go to see how danish blue has survived at rothesay dock, clydebank. my wind genny was tied up with a plastic bag. be interesting if it has survived.
at the moment i`m taking the absence of a phone call from the yard as a good sign.
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The genny was spinning at the time. Aerogen recommend not tying it off as it can cause flat spots on the bearings and in any event the resistance of a stationary genny is greater I would think than a spinning one. It has survived 90mph gusts three years ago on the mooring in Balvicar Bay. Mike, the boatyard owner, was up most of the night - he described the worst of the gusts as 'like hammer blows'.
The genny jumped off its mast where the swivel bearing is gripped in a collar clamped over the mast - I will have a good look today and see if I can work out why that happened.
well all appears to be ok. no damage. the wind genny is all right but the plastic bag is a bit tatty now. i`ll replace it with a heavier duty one tomorrow. my gen is just a wee rutland 503 and the pole is well braced.
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Our problem seems to have been that the bolts on the underside of one of the poles (it is a tripod mast) had vibrated loose - they were an inch down the overlong bolts on the underside of the deck and ready to fall off into the depths. Don't know what vibration caused this - we have never had to tighten those bolts in four and a half years, but since coming ashore in November this has happened.
This meant that the mast could (we speculate) 'whip' in the gusts, which is what must have eventually thrown the whole caboodle into the air.
I think it is time to invest in a whole range of stainless nyloc bolts and use these on any fittings that are hard to get at or prone to vibration.
