A late night blow and…
After Neptune returned to the deeps last night, Bill and I hit our racks and Sharon completed her watch. The winds died down, and when Bill rousted me at 4am the hand off was simple – light winds at about 8 knots and we are making about 4 knots boat speed.
Needless to say, one of the interesting things at night is we have no “view” of whats coming. About 5am in a matter of minutes the windspeed jumps up to about 20 kts and boat speed has jumped to 10kts plus. As you will recall, although the storm squall is unexpected none of these numbers are very big – we had been up to 17kts boat speed and close to 40kts wind at one stage. None the less prudence is never and bad idea. The rain has started pouring down. I go out and start furling in some of the headsail.
As often happens, you hear and feel the change with winds and speed. Up pops Bill’s head and I confirm all is OK, and back down to the racks he goes. The genoa furling in on the port side and because we are on a port tack, the sheet I need to release is on starboard. As I release a little more sail I check the main sail and see the clew is flying free/has blown loose.
Remember the line that had frayed and Bill fixed a week ago? Well the new section of line had frayed mostly through and then must have snapped in the squall. I roust Bill again, we reef the main sail, and all is well for the night. Bill goes off to the racks once again. Sailing often feels like a day of boring and 5 minutes of intense adrenaline.
After another few hours – back to light winds and our expected southern course – Bill rousts again, but we have another issue that takes priority and offends Bill’s sensibilities.
A seagull? (Sharon has a book and may know better) had landed on the foredeck and deposited some guano. This was not to be allowed a second time! It was a test of wills and William won. On to the main sail!
Needless to say the broken outhaul line had pulled all the way out of the boom. Bill is quite resourceful at these types of issues (and seems to always has spares, extra line etc). We had enough extra line on one of the reefing lines that we managed to pull it out where the boom attaches to the mast, attached the mended line and pulled it back to the end of the boom and reattached to the main sail. Back in business!
It is now 2:15pm, a quiet day. Winds remain light and from the aft port quarter. We are making reasonable progress under full sail. Most of the models now show us arriving on the morning of the 26th.
