Renegade - Leg 1, Days 3-4

It's 04:00 on day 4 and I have the watch while Julie and Peter get some rest. I have good wind at 15-20 kts. It's been from the east all day, but there is a rain cloud sneaking up behind me right now and pushing it southeast. Not a problem at all, the boat needs a rinse. There's a big container ship on the horizon that will pass about 2 miles ahead of us, fairly close by ocean standards.

We had some excitement yesterday just before sunset. We were sailing wing and wing with the genoa poled out on the opposite side from the mainsail. I wanted to switch sides, moving genoa over to port and main to starboard, so we can make more progress south. This maneuver is complicated by the pole, which has to be taken down and then set up on the other side, and we only had a short time before sunset. Peter and I had just started to the foredeck when the two fishing lines we'd been dragging all day both started running. Fish on!
Quick to the stern where we both have serious fights on our hands. My fish was very strong and I lost the fight after ten minutes or so when he broke my line. Peter did better and boated a nice Yellowfin tuna. I suspect that my fish was the same type, but we'll never know.
With our attention back to the sail change, we secured the pole and then decided to drop the genoa to the deck. We've had trouble from the start with the roller furling and thought perhaps putting it up using a different halyard might improve things. We attached the spare genoa halyard and started winching the sail up, it's a heavy sail and with some wind pressure on it, it was hard going. It was nearly to the top when there was a loud bang and it came crashing down again. Turns out that the steel shackle on the halyard failed and now we are in a bit of a pickle with no good way to rehoist the sail as the end of the halyard is now at the top of the mast. The sail now sits lashed on the foredeck, where it will likely stay until we reach port and can make repairs. We are slower without the genoa, but it's not a large difference so long as the wind is up.
It's now 7 hours later, 11:00, and we have the genoa hoisted again. Woot! Our main genoa halyard is damaged and the 2nd genoa halyard is skyed with a broken shackle, but we still have spinnaker halyards and one of those worked well. Problem solved! It's been many hours since I slept but there's tuna ceviche being prepared, so sleep will have to wait.

Jeff Taylor