47:27N 16:31W

We have had an “interesting” and challenging 36 hours onboard Raven, hence the lack of a blog update yesterday.

After several days of strong winds and seas, we had thought that conditions were starting to improve a bit on Wednesday evening and were looking forward to more favourable winds for the subsequent few days.

The Gods had other ideas and late on Wednesday evening we suddenly lost our forestay , which parted at the deck fitting in the bow, and the genoa headsail which split into many pieces. During the course of trying to get that situation under control we were unable to start the engine which has scarcely missed a beat for the 9 months of the trip so far .

Fortunately at daylight yesterday we were able to clear the wreckage of the forestay and genoa but we have not yet been able to fix the engine, which appears to have a blocked fuel line probably caused by all the churning about in recent days and weeks.

Sadly Marie Antoine, our self steering gear and 4th crew member, suffered a broken “shoulder” at some stage before or during the incident so she is out of action for a while and we will see if we can fix her.

We got moving again yesterday afternoon with a reduced sail plan, jury forestay and storm jib, then dropped the sails overnight so we could all get our first sleep in over 24 hours. We hoisted sails again earlier this morning feeling more refreshed and are now able to point in roughly the right direction but our reduced sail capacity means that our speed is slower........so our arrival day, which was uncertain anyway, is certainly delayed  by at least a week.

We have adequate food and water onboard and are in regular contact with Falmouth Coastguard who can give further support as necessary, so are doing OK but apologies that Allan and Simon are not getting the sunshine cruise they were expecting and for any problems caused by our later arrival.