More haste, less speed
Truantofsark
Sat 19 Feb 2011 18:20
A quiet night with only a little squall activity. We were going slowly
before breakfast and were discussing how to improve our speed. Whose idea
was it to put up the spinnaker? We reckoned we could put it up in the 25
minutes before the radio net....Four hours later we finally got it down; not
that we were flying it; we spent the whole time trying to get it down
following several forestay wraps. There was much stress and arm waving and
we were making progress using the boat and the wind to try and unwrap it
when finally it tore in half and we could bring it down. Oddly enough we
also almost ran over a fishing line from some local fishermen who were the
first people we have seen close up for 17 days; we are not sure their
gestures towards us were all that friendly. Spinnaker back in bag and locker
just before a squall hit us from behind. By then we were all burnt beetroot,
had rope burns, and were truly exhausted plus were also now getting soaked;
but we were all relieved and checking for lost digits and assessing body
damage. We can now see Barbados, in fact we almost bumped into it during all
this. So we are continuing our tradition of arriving at the end of an
Atlantic crossing with a ripped spinnaker, sore hands, burnt feet and
damaged egos. Having decamped to the cockpit, hoping to stay put until we
docked, Lyster had to go up the mast to re-fix a light fitting on the first
spreader, the cause of the initial tear in our beloved kite. Roll on
Grenanda.
