It was not good news that we need to remove our backstay in order to be craned onto the ship.

Discovery Yachts were brilliant yet again and Nigel reassured us that this was no problem and talked us through the procedure.

Several other skippers have also removed their backstays before and had lots of advice, Gavin was brilliant too and came over to help Mark do a ‘practise run’ so that we are confident we can re connect it easily ourselves.

For Mark, the worry of taking this down was outweighed by the excitement of going shopping for a BIG adjustable spanner for the job.

After visiting several shops that didn’t stock anything bigger than the one we already had, we found just the right place.

On asking for a BIG adjustable spanner, the shop owner went out the back and brought out a 24inch huge spanner that was so heavy we had difficulty even lifting it !

We settled for the 18 inch as Mark was confident that he would still have the biggest tool on the rally !