I knew today was going to be nothing but trouble when various weather forecasts turned out to be wide off the mark. The forecast 'light winds' turned out to be a respectable 18kts with Guapa still in her berth. Not exactly ideal conditions to change your sails.
However, where there's a will, there's a way. And I've never been short of will.

Opened up the sail bags and started to unroll the mainsail. Looked and felt great – the sail simply oozes quality. Reef points well made, batten pockets just right, Ronstan cars as requested, nice crisp feel... I inserted the battens and in no time the sail was ready to go up. And everything went fine... till we had to slide in the first batten car. The above picture illustrates our predicament. No other option but to take the whole thing down again. Guapa 0 – Murphy 1.

The wind picked up even more and I felt cold and somewhat disheartened. Lunchtime. Hot cup of soup and a sandwich. Followed by a nice cup of tea (with a generous measure of my own secret ingredient). I was a new man.

In the mean time, the wind had abated. Time to tackle the genoa. Old one down, new one up. It looked, felt and set just right. Not much more to it than that. Not all bad than.

Back home, I e-mailed the sail loft to see if they can offer a solution. Still waiting to hear from them. As a back-up, I also e-mailed our rigger – Nigel has always 'been there' for us in the past. And I'm convinced that he'll not let us down this time round, should we need him. Deadline: next week-end.

All in all, I hope today will turn out to be nothing more than a minor set-back. Onwards and upwards.