Sailing has its ups and downs

There are two very different strategies being adopted by the fleet. Some are choosing to stay north close to the rhumb line (the shortest route to our destination) while others have headed south in the hope of finding more wind. We thought about heading south but changed our minds and so we’re now wallowing in the middle with very little wind. We really need to be able to fly either our Blue Water Runner or the gennaker to make any progress, but both of those need the spinnaker halyard and that is currently snoozing in the aft locker rather than running up through the mast as it should be. We sent Jacob up the mast a couple of times yesterday to try and fix the problem. The aim was to to run a mousing line from the top of the mast to the bottom, and then use that thinner line to pull the spinnaker halyard back up. It sounds easy in principal but when the mast is gyrating wildly it become a race against seasickness. The end result: mice 0 seasickness 2.

Rather than accept defeat, we decided to hoist the Blue Water Runner using the spare halyard. The problem with this rope (apart from the fact it’s green despite being on the port side) is that the line it follows is far from ideal. To reduce chafe we added a short piece of plastic pipe to the end, and to make sure we could hoist the sail before it started to fill, we neatly tied orange wool at metre wide intervals along its length. Then came the moment of truth. It went up perfectly; as the wind found its way into the sail, each loop of wool progressively snapped, and the sail “unzipped” itself and set beautifully.

We made good progress for the next few hours and so to celebrate, I decided to try out my home made fishing lure. All the other boats in the fleet seem to be catching fish in abundance, whereas our efforts to date have proved woeful. This was obviously down to poor equipment rather than any lack of skill, and the clear solution was to make something that would be more appealing to a passing tuna. A cork, some silvery strips from a crisp packet and some reflective tape produced a lure which looked surprisingly squid like. It had eyes and everything. I cast it into the sea and watched it stream out behind the boat, the silver tails catching the sun. I was awash with confidence; how could such an attractive amuse bouche fail. Unfortunately I never had time to find out. There was a bang as the green halyard parted and the Blue Water Runner once more dived into the sea. Once more we wrestled the sail back on board, and once again we set our poled out gennaker to resume our snail like progress westward. On the plus side we are getting much better at setting up the spinnaker pole, all we need now is some more wind.