Day 1 Toward the Tuamutos

And we are off! From the start the winds have been blowing pretty good! Mainly around 20 knots.  Last night after I went to sleep, I awoke to the sound of us moving fast through the water, no longer does the water sound like a river outside, but rather a waterfall with big rapids!  As I came into the living room I found Cassidy had turned us an additional 40 degrees down wind, to reduce the wind load, and we were still humming along at 12 knots! The apparent wind was tickling 30 knots, so the actual wind was over that.  I took a look into the darkness outside, and the rain that welcomed me let me know that we were in a squall. All appeared well so I crawled off to bed.  The third squall hit us a little after 4am but this time there was a loud snap, and the sound of flapping sails. (Which is never good when you are heading down wind).  Again Cassidy was on top of it and had us aiming downwind, so I headed outside again. The rain was coming down much harder, and I could make out the white mass of the mainsail about 2/3's of the way down, carefully self stowing itself into the sail-covers. 

It was too dark to try getting the sail up again, so I set to coming up with a plan. The reason the sail came down is the pulley at the top of the sail lost its sheave and chafed right through the halyard.  Additionally the head of the sail had jumped out of the track.  When the sun came up we pulled Cassidy up with the boom lift (it did not look comfortable up there!) had her drop the cars back into the sail track, and with the boom lift we had the sail back up and we were off again.

Less than an hour later the top cars had jumped out of the track again, the boom lift halyard had chafed through again, and the mainsail was back down! Rough!  Ultimately I ended up going up the mast, and it was like "off roading with Shannon driving", I was barely able to hang on.  Fortunately I was able to tie myself to the mast, and with my legs wrapped around the mast, managed not to get shaken free!  I hung a block from the top of the mast and now the mainsail is up with a jury rigged external halyard with a monkeyed footblock at the top.

Feeling good though, as we are back up to 7 knots!!  I am going to try for some sleep now!

Courage