Lazy Jacks
Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Sun 21 Sep 2008 21:07
18:05.43S
170:20.88W
Hi Folks,
Wind rising all night we tried to put off reefing
the main but as we approached 8knts on the stay sail and main we decided to reef
to No 3 reef, a fundamental floor has show up during this exercise, lazy jacks
caught on the flogging sail and ripped of there mounts , this is all at four
thirty in the morning, spreader lights on, and reasonable vision on deck , when
we got the sail into the reefed position and took up on the lazy jacks to
contain the sail nothing happened as they were happily flapping there severed
ends flying about like a merry go round, it was at that point that some eyelets
along each reef line would have come in handy , with 20m of sail flapping wildly
around like a demented tescos shopping bag in a windy car park we had to wrestle
the beast and get as much tied off on we could, three of the jacks had held on
one sail so we went onto the other tack and slowly bundled the sail into it
getting the some ties over the sail and securing it this took us the best part
of an hr , it confirms my inbuilt dislike of the lazy jack system and something
that is definitely in the list of alterations in NZ , the list grows ... but
these jacks have been on it from the beginning , fine on a smaller boat but
these size of mains a no no as far as I am concerned .
Just to add to the above a few nice squalls came
through as well just to add to the excitment .. wonderbar ....
The upside is that we all worked well
again in a crisis and resolved the problem as it arose , this of course is the
up side of a larger crew, but if it had been Lyn and myself on our own we would
have reefed down the day before, just as we always do , the reef would
have been executed fine by the four of us with no problem but for the
dreaded lazy Jacks ....
We are progressing well to Tonga and now only have
230 nm to run , we will have to slow down at some point to enter in Daylight ,
so as we shortened sail we put the extra reef in to keep the hull speed down,
which should get us there by 5 o/c in the morning ready for first light
.
All lazy jacked out ...
The soggy crew
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