Today was an eventful day with disaster narrowly averted and
I am pleased to report that everyone is safe and well but with Fatty nursing an
injured hand. It was a beautiful night last night with a
big moon, steady trade winds and the perfect temperature for a night watch in
shorts and T shirt.
We celebrated with a
huge breakfast made by Paulus and as the sun climbed into a cloudless sky the
wind dropped off and we decided to set the spinnaker again.
We have a few hitches unfurling today but the big red kite
is soon up, powering us along on a beam reach, and everyone goes back to their
mid morning jobs: Paulus in the galley as mother, Fatty on the SSB chatting to
Amanda on El Mundo and Kerry on watch. I am just tweaking the spinnaker sheet
when the fishing rod bucks in its holder and line starts running out, the
ratchet on the brake making its mechanical chatter to draw our attention to the
fact that we have a fish on the line. It’s a beautiful Dorado, around 4 kilos
in weight and the new rod and reel easily recover the fish onto the aft deck
where Paulus and I give it a generous helping of the welcome drink (cheap rum)
to knock it out and then dispatch it quickly. Soon we have four good-sized
fillets in the fridge with everything else over the side and the decks rinsed
down.
After lunch Paul and I are in the galley making a marinade
for the fish ceviche when we hear a shout from Kerry. We race up on deck to see
the spinnaker flying free thirty feet away from the boat, no longer attached to
the bowsprit, wildly out of control. It is immediately apparent that the tack
fitting that connects the furler to the bowsprit has failed and the whole
mechanism is now flailing around, still attached to the spinnaker high in the
air and snatching at the line like a huge wild bird.
Paul and I race up to the foredeck and I
find that the furling line, still connected to the thrashing spinnaker swivel,
is now wrapped around the guard rail, which is not designed to take these sorts
of loads and is bent out of shape and in danger of being ripped off the deck.
I call Fatty to let the spinnaker sheet fly to dump the
power and to her credit she does this immediately, probably saving the guard
rail and the whole spinnaker assembly in the process. I only discover later
that the heavy spinnaker sheet, under huge load, has whipped through the palms
of her hand giving her some bad rope burns. However at this stage I am unaware
of anything other than how to tame this thrashing sail. The first job is to remove the strain on the
guardrail so Paul and I secure the furling line to a deck cleat to give us time
to think. From the bow I can see that the heavy machine screws securing the pad
eye to the bowsprit have sheared off under the huge loads and if we are to
recover the sail we need to secure the furler to the boat as quickly as
possible. We use a short length of line
to temporarily control the foot of the sail, allowing us to shackle the furler
onto the stem head where it is secure and the immediate danger has passed.
However, attached to the stem head in this way it would be
impossible to operate the furler because the stay fouls on the guardrail so we
have to find a way to secure it once more to the end of the bowsprit. We run a length of dyneema inside the length
of the hollow carbon bowsprit and secure both ends to the windlass on the
foredeck leaving a loop protruding from the end. sfer the furler onto the loop
at the end of the bowsprit and we are back in business. This arrangement is the alternative method of
rigging the furler so I feel confident that we have a very good solution.
Re-grouping in the cockpit we are all exhausted. Kerry is nursing Fatty’s rope
burns and Paul and I are drained after the physical exertion of taming the
runaway spinnaker. Fortunately the only lasting damage is the guardrail that
will have to be straightened out when we get to St Lucia. It could have been a lot worse.
Paulus, who has been an absolute rock all day, providing the
muscle on the foredeck, now turns his hand to the galley and serves up to the
cockpit a cold spicy ceviche of dorado, only hours out of the ocean, fried
chorizo with a squeeze of lime juice and four vodka and tonics: a great way to finish
a very eventful and rather dramatic day on Juno. Kerry has bandaged up Fatty’s
hand and sent her to bed for an early night with Paulus gallantly standing in
to do her night watch. I was very
impressed how we worked as a team to deal with the runaway spinnaker, with
everyone stepping up to the challenge, acting calmly and decisively – what a
great crew.
The boat is back on the rails, broad reaching at nine knots,
however we are being overtaken by another yacht, still flying its spinnaker
overnight. I can’t imagine how we would have dealt with our drama on a heaving
deck in the pitch black, or furling the spinnaker at night in a squall with 30
knots of wind trying to rip the kite to shreds: so the wild red bird is caged, firmly zipped into its sail bag on the
foredeck where it will remain until daylight – even if it does cost us a few
positions on the leader board.