Sarah Mercedes - Day14

Today had a little lighter winds than previous days. With it hovering around 15 knots, we were able to use our light spinnaker (the one that isn't in a thousand pieces). Everyone was up at dawn ready for the hoist. For the whole morning we sailed fast and deep with the kite, so fast and deep we stretched our lead to Blue Magic by 3 miles. It perhaps was going so well we got a bit cocky, as at 2:30 a squall approached. We thought we could ride it out. This was a misjudgement. A socking of the kite under pressure was required. Although we did get the kite down unscathed ( a quite miraculous achievement considering the strain the kite must've been under) we did encounter further tests. The bucket end of the sock, upon arrival to the deck, split in two. This required Pete to hug the sock as hard as possible keeping it on the boat while we dealt with problem 2, the spinnaker sheet around the rudder. With Graham heading up and three strong lads on the foredeck heaving like sumo wrestlers, the spinnaker sheet was recovered. We then did some crafty repair work to the sock and she could be hoisted once more. Only losing 30 minutes to the squall meant we had a fantastic day of sailing with the spinnaker, travelling faster than Blue Magic despite being at a worse wind angle (and 17 feet shorter).