After yesterday\u2019s email, we continued along at much the same pace until 4:30am (when else?) when the jib halyard chafed through.\u00a0 It really just supports the furler, so it seems a very odd thing. But the result was that the head slowly slide down as the jib fed itself out on the bottom of the luff.\u00a0 Steve was on watch, and I was apparently dreaming, as his calls of \u201cDavid, David\u201d worked themselves oddly into my dream. But wake up I did, and we soon had the jib ut of the water and secured back on deck. As daylight was only an hour or so away, we decided to wait until then to deal with it, so we cruised under main only at 5 knots for a while.<\/p>\n
With the daylight came the obvious solution that I needed to go up the mast to make the repair. What is no big deal at the dock can be pretty exciting at sea, as the mast is like a big pendulum, and every little movement of the boat in the waves is felt 10-fold atop the mast. So, while hanging on for dear life through what felt like 3 or 4 G\u2019s, I re-ran the jib halyard and made a few adjustments up there to prevent the chafe from happening again. A few minutes later the jib was back up and we were back to full speed southbound.<\/p>\n
Its been a mostly sunny day, but we did get hit by a line of squalls this afternoon, which brought short periods of rain, and great variations in wind strength and direction, keeping us busy adjusting through all the changes.<\/p>\n
It looks like we\u2019ll pass Grenada this evening sometime, and hope to thead between Trinidad and Tobago on our way to the South American coastline. There is a huge bad current through those parts, so we want to get through as quickly as possible and into the current relief along the shorelone. We\u2019ll see how that goes\u2026<\/p>\n
12.49N\u00a0 62.18W \u00a0 377nm gone,\u00a0 4343 to go.\u00a0 3pm 6\/29<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After yesterday\u2019s email, we continued along at much the same pace until 4:30am (when else?) when the jib halyard chafed through.\u00a0 It really just supports the furler, so it seems a very odd thing. But the result was that the … Continue reading