Day 32
leeonsea
Lee Price
Sat 28 Jun 2008 16:51
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N42.10.65 W023.37.10
A bit of a disaster has befallen me. Yesturday
afternoon after supper, while I had the engine off performing some routine
maintainence, the Spinika halyard parted (thats a sailory way of saying the rope
broke) I didn't notice to be honest. I started the engine again and popped it
back in gear, sat and looked forward, no Spinika. It took a little while to
figur out what had gone on, then, in a panic, I threw the engine into neutral
suddently aware that there was every chance of rapping the Sail round the prop.
Fortunatly this did not happen and I went forward
to investigate. Sure enough, once I'd pulled the wet sail back on board, the
Halyard had parted about two foot from the end and the loose end had fallen back
down in the mast. This is a bit of a bugger. Now I have no way of running
downwind at all, particularly painful after the loss of the Spinika pole earlier
in the trip.
I have to say that this came close to upsetting my
Zen like attitude to this second leg of the trip, though not as much as the
pathetic lack of wind that slapped the sails back and forth once I'd reset the
main and foresail and adjusted my direction to cope with the loss. Now moving
more northely at about 4kts I'd as yet not managed to break the 5kt barrier in 3
days of sailing. A little slanging match errupted between me and mother nature
for a short while before I got hold of myself and resigned to another sleepless
night.
Oddly, Halyard fatigue has caused me concern,
only the other day I pulled the Main Sail Halyard through to check
it's length. It's ok.
I had suffered a bad Spinika wrap early in the day,
that it to say, in the light airs the Spinika had calapsed and the little
breaths of air had folded it neatly round the foresail. It's happened a
number of times over the last two days but this took some considerable dealing
with, pulling and poking with the Boat hook to free it up. I wonder if the
grating of this type of motion caused the line to rub through, though on what I
can't think.
Today, at dawn, the wind began to swing round and
it veered SW to NE by noon, I think this was a passing weak front, this pushed
me off to the SE as close pinched as I could be and being attacked by Ocean
currents on the other tack sent me of NW a tacking angle of about 180deg. So no
progress has been made today. Currently I'm motor sailing at 2kts into the
'wind' against the current. This is really starting to get me down. 4 days out
and only 300 miles covered, not great.
TiTs
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