5th December
Trifon had a difficult night yesterday as the new spinnaker pole that was holding out the genoa to windward broke. This failure also broke the genoa furling system and we were unable to roll up the fully deployed genoa in the 20-25 knot winds. The halyard holding the broken spinnaker pole managed to wrap itself inside the genoa and blocked any further progress to tame the 100 m2 sail. We waited until daylight due to the 2-3 metre waves making working on the foredeck at night risky. We used the second spinnaker halyard to try and wrap up the genoa however this still left too much exposed flogging genoa. We then managed to unwrap the first halyard and rolled the the genoa by turning the sail round the furler as the furling line had snapped. The genoa is now safely wrapped away but unusable and we have lost the possibility of using the spinnaker pole with jib. The traveller car for the main sail was broken in the first few hours of the ARC and we have a jury rigged mainsheet system that seems to work well. We are still making good progress towards St Lucia in fairly steep seas and should pass the 1000 miles to go in the next 8 hours.
All is well on board and hopefully we can catch up our sleep over the next few days.
Carl