I did it. I wrapped the kite. Not this one pictured. That's kickaboo, which Morgen wrapped on this same passage two years ago. And I'm glad he did.
No, I wrapped the new kite. The one that was still to be named. I thought maybe something as majestic as "The White Knight." But after last night, she earned a different name, one that carries on Big Blue Bitch's legacy.
How did I wrap it? Sailing deep and getting turned over by a wave at the end of my surf. After two twists around the forestay, we were f$&ked. All hands on deck, we tried to ease the halyard to get it down, but that made it worse.
How did we get it down? That's an answer two years in the making. After the eased halyard made our lives more difficult, we talked about releasing the tack and the flashbacks came. These were the steps we started taking when we wrapped kickaboo, and none of them worked. The only thing that actually got the kite unwrapped was sending Morgen up the mast to untwist from the top down once we finally made it into port.
But then we had only 100 NM to limp in, now we had to deal with this at sea. So as the bow team was discussing options, I suggested we send someone up and I got nothing short of NFW in response. Going up in 20 knots wasn't the best option, but it was the only option. And I had to be the volunteer.
You can't be both the villain and the hero, but in a few hours last night I was. The frustration of my kite wrap was clearly palpable, and I of course wasn't happy with myself either. But the mood soon change when we discussed all other options and realized this was indeed the only way we could get this down.
So up I went. At midnight, with reef 1 main and a violently shaking forestay complete with two angry spinnaker bubbles. I went up bear hugging the rig, and the ascent was pretty straight forward, until I had to unclip my safety line from the staysail halyard and move to clipping around the rig between mast track cars. That's when things got a little messy and the final 20% of the climb took up about 80% of my quickly depleting energy. I'll spare the rest of the details, Mom.
Slow, purposeful movements. Get a good grip. One hand for the boat, one hand to work with. Unclipped spinnaker halyard, clipped to myself. Slowly began to untwist head as bow crew pulled spinnaker down. Now get me down.
Probably should have went down the forestay and untwisted the spinnaker myself from the top down, but I tried to communicate that from the top of the rig, but the only response I'd get from below was the mission was to get me down first. So the bow had a bit of a struggle untwisting the head from the deck, but we eventually got the kite down, completely unharmed (the kite, see arms for bruises).
So as suggested by @em.nagel, who knew Big Blue Bitch well, our new kite is aptly named Basic White Bitch, because I literally can't even...
✍️@megriles
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