Day 7 – Neptune’s obstacle course

After yesterday, we were looking forward to a nice, mellow day of sailing downwind.  We didn’t get it, unfortunately.

We both spent the night in the cockpit, taking turns on watch with the other sleeping in the cockpit, in case any other squalls or other events came up.  At nightfall last night, we were still seeing winds in the high 20’s and our favorite – big residual waves coming from two directions.  It was rolly, needless to say.

Come morning, the winds had moderated.  Good news, although they became too light for the boat to power through the waves.  It was sloppy, with the main and genoa banging.  We decided to go ahead and start the engine to charge the batteries, and while we did so, we tried to troubleshoot our new regulator and alternator which were charging the batteries, but just not quite at the rate we expected them to.  We spent a few hours being productive with that, but never came to any “aha” moments.  We decided to move onto patching our main, as we have a small tear in the dacron from our solar panel.  We also unfortunately now have a tear in the luff near a sail slide from trying to wrest it down in one of our squalls from the previous night, but that will manage without any attention right now.  As Chris was cutting the sail repair tape patches, we both heard a slug of sail come crashing to the deck – our main was now on deck, with the halyard happily sagging from the top of the mast.  The shackle had come undone – our fault completely for not zip-tying it or mousing it closed.  We’d be going up the mast today, in sloppy seas!

We took our time getting ready, and decided to start the engine to point the boat down the waves, going fast.  Justin put on his old dinghy lifejacket for protection, and we hoisted our bosun’s chair and pulley system up the mast.  Soon enough, we dropped it back down after deciding that Justin would be doing all he could to hold on to the mast for dear life and avoid being a tether ball – he would not be able to help with any hoisting.  So, Chris pulled him up on two halyards, Justin grabbed the main halyard and retreated to the deck, where he promptly fell onto his back in a heap.  Apparently it was hard work holding on!

We replaced the halyard shackle and tied a spectra “just in case” cord to the second hole in the main headboard, before we decided to pull out our gennaker to hoist.  After hauling it out onto the foredeck and making preparations to haul it up, we went to furl the headsail.  No go.  Our Harken furler had spit out some important machine screws critical for the furling unit to work.  Luckily, there was one screw still on the foredeck!  We found two others in our fastener box and with some Locktite, replaced the errant screws so that we have a working furler again.  We brought the gennaker back down into the cabin – we were too exhausted to think of putting it up.

So, Justin has just gone down below to try and catch up on some badly needed sleep, and Chris has been in the cockpit trying to catch up on logs.  Alas, there’s no rest for the weary today, as it looks like there may be a line of thunderstorms lining up….so we’ll get to practice the squall drill yet again – reef the main, clear the cockpit, put on real shoes and gloves, check below to make sure things are stowed…