Log Day 7/8 - a bang during the night!

s/v Safena's blog
Simon Ashley
Sun 2 Dec 2018 20:25
It is a fact of sailing life that when things go wrong, more often than not it is during the night in bad weather. Well the weather was fine, lightish winds persisted, but on Nina’s watch at 2345 she heard a loud bang. Her inspection by searchlight showed a problem with the pole. The dyneema strop to which were attached the fore and aft guys had chaffed through, the lines were in the sea and the pole was darting about. She woke Andy and I. All hands on deck we managed to get the genoa furled and the end of the pole back on the foredeck where we made a new temporary strop and reattached the guys, reset the pole and relaunched the genoa. It sounds easy but in the pitch dark and Atlantic swell it took us over an hour.

Today was relaxed. Winds remain light and our progress has slowed but we gybed this morning and continue to sacrifice some VMG in order to get onto a more southerly track where the wind is predicted to be a bit stronger over the next few days. With about 1600 nm to go I think this should be worth it.

It was very hot today and we had the Bimini back and relaxed in the sun gently gliding along. Andy caught another Mahi Mahi! Nina did the laundry!

I can’t believe the ARC start was a week ago today! I predict we will be half way to St Lucia in about 1.5 days.

I was cook today. It was eggs and bacon for brunch and fresh Mahi Mahi tacos for dinner!

Simon

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