Highs and lows

The past 24 hours have been a bit of a rollercoaster, perfectly encompassing the highs and lows of sailing. On the plus side, yesterday was shower day, and it provided one of those moments that make this trip so memorable. I was standing (or hunched, would be more accurate) in the shower, looking out of the window at the bluest of blue seas as a shoal of flying fish skimmed past the boat. They must have travelled a good 50 metres or so before plunging into a wave, with the sun on their scales giving each one a sparkling iridescence. It was magical.

That brief moment of pleasure now seems an eternity away. Our prayers for more wind were answered in abundance and we spent the evening charging along at around 7 knots. I was on watch around midnight when there was a loud bang. I was gazing at the night sky behind the boat at the time and when Vanessa called up from the cabin below to ask what it was, I said I thought we’d just slammed into a large wave. But when I turned round and looked at the instruments I saw we were only doing 2 knots, and when I looked at where our sail should be there was just an empty space full of stars. The halyard holding the top of the sail had worn threw (or been chewed through by the still elusive “Maverick”) and the sail was floating on the sea. After a bit of a struggle, we managed to man handle it onto the deck and then tried to hoist it on a spare halyard, but it got in a tangle and fell into the sea again (I fear our Blue Water Runner may be taking its name a little too literally). Once more we wrestled it out of the water although this time it brought with it bucketfuls of water and a teeny fish (which Richard subsequently sat on). We decided to deal with it in the daylight and so lashed the sail to the guardrail and gave it a firm talking to about which element it was designed for, and that we still had the receipt if it continued to misbehave. We then spent the rest of the night creeping along under a poled out genoa and our very small staysail. All those miles we’d gained on the fleet gradually slipping away.