Day 6 royally kicked our ass. It started off beautifully. I was on morning shift. Wolf came up to the cockpit shortly before dawn with Óisin who was full of fun, love and chat, absolutely dying for Cúisle (who sleeps in the cockpit when we are passaging) to wake up. When she did, it was still dark and the two of them sat cuddled with me watching the sun come up. A rare moment, they are normally both so active, they come for cuddles but jump back down again just as quick. Up down, up down, non stop little energiser bunnies. It was so nice to just sit there peacefully with them looking forward to what the day may bring.
You will recall our strategy had been to head South to try to avoid the hole that was due to arrive further North within a few days. After the first night of sailing we were lying 28th, after the second we had dropped to 45th. No doubt due to the longer miles we were sailing, essentially away from the rhumb line. It made us doubt our strategy for just a moment but having downloaded another weather report from PredictWind we were satisfied that it should pay back eventually. By day 3 we had knocked off over 20 places and were lying 20th, day 4, 18th and day 5, 17th. Yeah baby. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? We were flying. The wind had eased to 10-12 knots but with our butterfly we were still making over 7 knots on average in a day, and the winds were set to remain moderate for the rest of the trip. Ideal for our magnificent sail, between that and our fishing success (a barracuda followed the yellow fin tuna) we were feeling pretty damn pleased with ourselves and enjoying the ride.
At around 9ish I went down for a shower and was eeling like a million dollars until I came back up to the cockpit and saw Heiko’s face. What is it I ask. Look up he says . I looked up to see our beautiful butterfly was ripped AGAIN! This time on the other side at the top the whole way across. It’s a brand new sail, these are perfect winds, what the hell is going on? We had used most of our sail tape for the first repair and were not sure if what we had left would suffice. Down the sail came and the arduous task of unrolling this beast in the salon to locate the rip, fix it and then try to roll her back up commenced. Wolf and I struggled with it below, sweating like pigs for over 6 hours leaving Heiko on babysitting duty. It was hard graft. Really hard graft. The sail is so heavy and so big trying to unravel it in a space less than half as long as the sail itself nearly broke us a number of times. It felt so often like we were getting nowhere. Cúisle bless her little heart came down regularly to encourage us, when she saw us every now and then head in hands wondering how we would ever manage it. She told us she knew it was hard work and could see we were stressed but reminded us that we are a family, a strong family, we do everything together, we never give up, we CAN do this. She is such a mature and beautiful little soul.
We continued to work tirelessly until about 4.30 when we were ready to hoist her back up. We dragged the beast up onto the deck, re-rigged the sheets and poles and hoisted her up. The moment of truth, let’s pop her out. Out she comes, and F*&k Rrrrriiiiipppp. The repair didn’t hold, we just hadn’t had enough tape. All that work, 6 hours battling with her in the salon but the rip was fatal. That was a blow, it hit us hard.
We had dreamed about that sail ever since we first saw her at the boat show and had struggled to save the cash to buy her. When we managed we were jubilant. After her first outing on the sail down from Las Palmas we were happier still, she is magnificent, and now after all that investment of time, emotion and money, in her second week of use and she is (at least for this trip) completely out of commission. That was hard. Having worked all day to the point of pure exhaustion for apparently nothing was hard. Accepting that the trip is gonna take considerably longer than we had estimated was another blow. Moral was at an all time low,.......and yet.... some beautiful things came out of it.
Wolf and I worked really well together, when one or other of us hit a low the other one took up the slack, and rallied. Our daughter grew in maturity before our eyes, at 5 years old making snacks for her brother when he was clearly cranky and hungry, getting clean nappies for him when necessary and entertaining him with books and games. When we were finished, Óisin who had clearly missed me all day gave me the best and longest cuddle ever. It just warmed my heart and helped soothe the disappointment of a failed repair.
So the day wasn’t a complete right off, and in between all the hard work, sweat and near tears we had an hour whilst waiting for the repair to dry to enjoy the best most tender Tuna sashimi with Japanese style rice noodle salad any of us have ever tasted.
The highs and lows of life at sea. Today we are taking it easy, regrouping, adjusting our expectations and hoping for another yellow fin Tuna!!
That’s the Saoirse crew out until the next time.
Stay tuned.
By Aisling Fenix