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Moondancer - and on and on and on



It’s been a challenging couple of days. Thursday evening we caught our first fish that was big enough to eat. This Dorado was dispatched, filleted and eaten within 2 hours, just delicious.

We had finally found some wind the spinnaker enjoyed and with our speed picking up it was decided to continue with the spinnaker through the night. At about 05:00 catering makes an almighty hullaballoo and wakes the boat. My first thought is he’s burnt the croissants but it appears the spinnaker halyard had broken and the spinnaker sail was in the water. With catering at the helm, maintenance and management began dragging the sail back onto the boat. Exhausted, but happy to have the sail back on board we retired back to our bunks with the understanding to work out what had failed in the morning.

During breakfast (still no croissants) we decided that the snap shackle must of broken off as when packing the spinnaker in the bag neither of us had noticed any shackle still attached to the spinnaker. Only one way to find out and that was to go up the mask and have a look. I volunteered catering should go. Catering said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not this time. After much finger pointing, it was decided that maintenance should go.

On first inspection the news was bad, the halyard had chaffed and fallen back inside the mast. Bugger, what a bugger. With a lot of grunting and cutting the majority of the rope was retrieved. This was not good news, no halyard, no spinnaker.

After lunch and a nice cup of tea, we had found the parts required to install a new halyard.  Installing a new halyard down the mast involves using a mouse (thin line with a weight on the end). You go to the top of the mast, that’s the very top and drop the weight with the line down the mast and hook it out about 4m from the bottom. Simple? It would be in a harbour but out in the middle of the bloody Atlantic it’s downright foolhardy. Two or so hours later and a few expletives (a lot) the new halyard was installed and maintenance had the welts to prove it. 

We all had a cold beer which put a smile back on all our faces.

We’ve found some wind tonight and will do our level best to make up the lost time.

Maintenance… STILL stabbing the keyboard with one finger on deck in the dark at 04:22


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