Day 14 - The day the pole fell down!
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sun 16 Mar 2014 02:55
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And there was us thinking it was all going so
well.........
Up until now we have been flying along under sail and
enjoying a very uneventful trip - all good. The headsail has
been poled out on the opposite side to the mainsail for the last few days
as the wind is directly behind us, the pole is used to stop the
sail collapsing and loosing power, as it is effectively on the 'wrong
side'. Anyway just after afternoon tea today, we were all sitting in the
cockpit chatting and BANG! The end of the pole attached to the sail
explodes and the whole lot falls down - just marvellous! Luckily for
us we have a second, if slightly smaller, pole and within half an hour we were
up and running again. It is a bit of a shame as we had planned to pole
both headsails out simultaneously later in the trip when the winds got lighter,
so that plan is now out of the window! However,
aside from spoiling our future plans, there is no damage at all to anything
apart from the pole so all is good. All we need to do now is figure out how
and where to get a new end for the pole and , if that is possible, hopefully get
it attached - trying to get a spinnaker pole on the airplane when we go back to
Oz later in the year might be a bit of a challenge!
Distance wise, we are still doing well, we have done
more than 3/4 of the journey and are just about to start our final 600 miles -
whooppee! All things being equal we will have dinner on dry land on
Wednesday.
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