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Aretha - High Drama at sea aboard Aretha



It’s dark. The radar is showing 3 large squalls rapidly bearing down on us from astern. We can feel the first drops of rain and the wind is increasing.

We’re under pressure.

The genoa has wrapped itself around the forestay and has a large billowing bag at the top of the sail and the bottom of the sail. The middle of the sail is tightly knotted. The furling gear has jammed and we can’t reduce sail. The noise of the flogging sail adds to the pressure.

We need to think and act fast as the wind is about to increase from 20 to 30-35 knots and we’ll be in trouble unless we can reduce sail.

How, you may wonder did we end up in this situation?

We were sailing fast downwind. The sails were set well with the mainsail to starboard and the genoa poled out to port. Our careful radar watch spotted the squalls some 5 miles away.

We make plans to reduce sail. The first step is to gybe the genoa. Then to reduce the sail by furling it in. Then after that to reef the main down. A good sensible plan and time to act on it.

It goes wrong when we gybe the genoa. Rather than flying neatly round, the sail wraps as we go downwind and knots itself.

We head upwind to try to clear it. It doesn’t work.

We sail sail downwind to clear it. It doesn’t work.

The squalls are fast approaching. We have to act fast. We have the deck lights on and are working on a deck that rolls from side to side as the sail flogs and makes communication hard.

The first step is to clear the decks. We have a lot of stuff on deck that can complicate things. We quickly lower the spinnaker pole and clear that and the guy, downhaul and up haul away.

We have a theory that the removable inner forestay has contributed to the wrap. We move the forestay back.

Deck cleared we shine the 250,000 candle power search light up the mast.

We can see we not one but two wraps. Double trouble.

We have a halyard wrap at the top of the mast which has jammed the furler, as well as the wrap half up the forestay.

Jani and I are on the foredeck. Paul and Nichola are in the cockpit.

We finally manage downwind to unwrap the first headsail wrap by taking all the pressure off the sail sheltering it behind the mainsail and by pulling it down and back.

The second wrap clears itself as we fully unfurl the sail.

We have worked fast and have a safely furled genoa before the first squall hits. We sail under main alone (going almost as fast as with both sails if a little rock and roll).

Drama over.

What we learnt:

Stuff happens. Stay calm and work through it till you fix it.

Don’t gybe the full genoa. Furl it and then gybe it, then unfurl it.

Valuable lessons. You can;t learn this in a classroom. Only time spent at sea doing this and discovering these things gives you experience and knowledge.

Over and out from Team Aretha.



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