Day 14 Busy busy busy. Day 15 Sunbathing Day/Washing Day
Moondancer
Sun 7 Dec 2008 14:07
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On Friday evening at about 8 pm our main halyard
broke. For those less yachtie, this holds up the main sail, and with 1000 miles
to go was quite serious. The problem was not chafing but that our
spare halyard/topping lift had jumped off its block and stuck between its block
and the main halyard block jamming it.Then when the sail flogging put too
much strain on the line it parted between the block and the
sail.
Our problem was that we had at one stroke lost both
our main halyard and spare which was jammed tight. So we went into Friday night
under genoa alone.
On Saturday morning Andrew said we would have it
fixed before lunch. The problem was how to lift the spare halyard back onto its
block from its jammed position, working from below. A few ideas were rejected
before Andrew's idea of walking the rope round the backstay to the front of the
boat, and using the angle of the backstay to work it higher and higher.
Eventually it was got into position, and with a lot of working backwards and
forwards eased out and the blocks freed. This was a little more complicated than
it sounds and took us until noon.
So now we had a halyard back and could use the main
but had no reserve should we have another problem on the run in. We
then decided to use the rope we had recovered to run another one
through. First the halyard was stitched into a continuous
loop,
 then another rope stitched alongside and the two
run back up through the blocks at the top of the mast.
 Several attempts later at 4 pm we hoisted our main
again, complete with newly run halyard and the old spare back in place. So then
we sat down for lunch!
The wind had been kind all day, steady at 12
knots, while we reached under the asymmetric, then gradually died so for the
third time we motored though the night.
Today Sunday, we had croissants and coffee, then
nipped out for the papers, in our dreams. In fact at daybreak the wind gently
filled in and we are back reaching towards St Lucia under asymettric and newly
cherished mainsail, in calm seas, we are doing chores and the washing bucket is
much in evidence.It is also officially a sunbathing day which means we can leave
the cockpit without a life jacket, sunbathing with one on does leave very
strange tan lines.
I went after the elusive tuna again with
predictable results,
 well at least the dorado are getting bigger. I
promise no more photos of fish until that tuna is caught.
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