Monday 28th January 11:22N 75:50W
Southern Princess
John & Irene Hunt
Mon 28 Jan 2008 16:50
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Just as we had finished a quite exhausting day
after the SAR operation and looking forward to a quiet night one of the genoas
went over the side in the early evening.
We had some problems with the bale (a ring on the
mast to hold the halyards in the required position) chewing through the halyard
to the new genoa on the code zero furling gear when crossing the Atlantic.
Part of the repairs in St Lucia was to reinforce
the halyard by wrapping it in heavy leather where it passed through the bale.
This halyard, wrapped in the heavy leather lasted just 600nm before the bale
chewed through it as well. Right through the leather and then through the cover
and the inner core of a 14mm nonstretch braided line.
So sure that we had solved the problem in St Lucia,
I had taken the safety halyard off this sail so that we could use it for the MPS
(Genniker) if the weather was light, so at 22:00 last night while
rocketing along at 10 - 11 knots there was a bloody great bang and the
whole lot went over the side. Oh and I was in a deep sleep!
Still fastened by the tack, the spinnaker pole and
the down haul the sail now acted very like an efficient sea anchor for
a while. All hands on deck with Chris & JH on the foredeck struggling with
some wildly flogging gear. The girls in the cockpit pulling, loosening and
variously adjusting the myriad of lines holding all this lot together while
Chris & I undid the knitting. Great to have experienced crew on board as
snafu's are quicker fixed.
Managed to get it all back on board without too
much loss of time and back to poled out genoa and full main.
Don't know what it is with me and new white sails,
the last one I had on Bushranger also went over the side and was also painted
with black antifoul!
Sunday the 27th was a very quiet day with little
wind and we lolopped along at 4 to 6 knots for most of it. One of the penalties
you pay when you stop for a SAR as we did yesterday is that you loose the
weather window you had been sailing in. Normally we would have been another 80nm
a head of where we now are and the weather there is a lot stronger and more
settled than the fluffy stuff we have now. Oh well thems the
breaks!
Guess who put the fishing lure out again the barb
covers on?
Spectacular show just on sunset with a mob of
dolphins chasing dinner at a terrific speed.
Stay safe.
JH |