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Dala - 2nd leg Bermuda to Horta - 3rd sailing day



Hi, all,

Today, we would have loved to say "Thanks God it's Friday!".
But sailing is never as you plan it: Yes, we started the day extremely well. After having gybed yesterday night at about midnight, we were right on track to Horta, our VMG equalled our SOG (for the non sailors, this simply means that every mille we were advancing was also taking us a mille closer to our destination, this is not always the case when you sail because the circumstances can lead you to take an indirect route).
And the wind conditions improved continuously up to the point where we were sailing between 8 to 12 Knts, at one moment we even touched 15.5 knts. That is my personal record!
But that was too much and we decided to be cautious and to take down our code zero sail. It was very difficult to do that in such windy conditions. The code zero rolled itself on itself, so we had to unroll it and do it again. We finally succeeded and were already exhausted by this fight. But that was only the beginning.
Then we decided to be even more cautious and in accordance with the wind conditions to take a reef. Again, it didn't go smoothly: The reef line found its way totally blocked between the sheeve inside the block and the external part of the block. It was blocked on the verge of being cut inside. So, we took a second reef, in order to allow us to have enough slack on the block of the first reef in order to unblock it. But it was impossible, the the first reef line was impossible to separate from the block inside which it was blocked. So we cut it and found ourselves sailing only with the main sail (reminder: we took down the code zero formerly) with two reefs!
But even so, we were still sailing at about 8 Knts because the wind was very strong.
Then we decided that we could improve our performance first by recreating a first reef in order to be able to free the second one and have then more sailing surface in the main sail. To do so, we took the third reef line and installed instead of the first reef. We could then free the second reef and gain some speed.
The next step was to hoist the genoa. And also there we encountered an unexpected problem: The furler was partly squeezed and didn't roll properly. We had to redo the operation three times until it was OK.
So now we are sailing with the genoa and the one-reefed main sail. We go fast, 8 to 10.5 Knts and I think that we may be cautious for the night and take a second reef and possibly take three rolls into the genoa. We'll decide later, I only hope that if we do so, we are not going again to run into "unexpected problems". I've had enough for today. But at least, we've been sailing very fast and made substantial progress today.
I wish all our sailors friends a safe weekend, and to my family in Israel and my Jewish friends Shabbath Shalom!

Albert

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