The day started with beautiful blue sky and sun shining.
For the first time since leaving Bermuda we come across other ships:
a Norwegian oil-rig tug boat and two cargo ships all heading west and all within one hour.
We set the code-zero that with the 10 kts wind was letting us sailing at 5 kts.
Then before lunch the wind decreased to 5 kts, so we decided to start the engine (first time since we left Bermuda -
since solar and wind generator were sufficient to recharge batteries with energy to spare for heating water for shower)
bring the mainsail down and furled the code-zero in and bring the code zero down back down.
This evening the wind from a deep low pressure up North will start to affect us and we should be able to go back sailing.

Breakage #1)
As we were bringing down the code-zero we discovered that the chafing guard of the halyard had broken and only the core was holding the weight of the code zero.
Unfortunately we could not bringing it down because the chafing guard was piling-up making the halyard very thick.
So we had to bring the code zero up again and "milk" the chafing guard (or as it is called in Italian "il calzino") away from the core.
A process that took more than one hour considering the length of the halyard.
At the end we were left with the core of the original spinnaker halyard that will serve as messenger for a new halyard.
Not sure why the chafing guard broke. There was no signs of chafing.

Three people job trying to remove the chafing guard from the halyard.

Breakage #2)
As we were working on milking the halyard, in the rolling boat due to swells, I leaned against the top lifeline and "pop" it  broke.
Likely I was fast enough to grab the wood handle on deck and not fall overboard.
As pictures below shows a clear case of corrosion of the stainless-steel  cable hidden by the plastic cover.
A clear example why nowadays it is recommendation to have lifelines in either dyneema or cable without plastic cover.
It's possible that the corrosion had happen to a section weakened several years ago when at a marina that lifeline had hit a pillar of a dock.
For now we replaced the broken top lifeline with a strong line (dyneema ?) salvaged from the old life-raft that we had to disposed in Oxford.

Point of breakage of the lifeline. The plastic was cat a bit to exposed the cable.

Breakage #3)
When we took the mainsail down we had found a pin on deck. The pin was holding the the section of the cart that slides in to the fast track with the section attached to the sail.
We replaced it with a screw and a nylon locking nut. What had broken (see photo below) is the head of the pin.
Surprising this is from the new doyle main sail that was hardly used before.

The broken pin holding the two sections of one of the mainsail carts. The pin head was on the left and is now missing. The pin also looks a bit bended.

Namiru' e Nairobi eating their lunch.

Synopsis  for the North-West Atlantic showing the deep low pressure system that will bring winds to us but stay well north of our 35 latitude.