L'Eau Commotion Westabout

9:30pm Sunday 21st January 2018 ( UTC-4 ) It seems hard to believe as I am still functioning quite well but I fell of the ladder when my feet at the time were 4 metres above the cabin roof and fell flat on my back. This winded me and as I lay there I felt a slight tingling in my toes which is always a good sign in these circumstances and much to my surprise I could give them a little wiggle. After a few minutes I found I was able to get up and make it to the cabin though of course feeling rather sore in my back and shoulders and snuggled up to the already prepared hot water bottle. I had put in a fair amount of effort getting the anchor in - fortunately except for about 10 metres of chain was all rope - with a pretty fresh breeze and preparing the spare anchor to drop once the main anchor was aweigh. I hoisted the chain up above the spreaders with a few metres dangling set up the ladder and started to climb up. I again thought it was pretty well stretched but the feet kept going out and a lot of weight being taken o n the hands. It also became apparent there was a bit of a swell which didn't help. Getting the loop over the cross trees was very difficult and the shackle was done up. I realised my hands were not functioning properly in the cold windy drizzle and decided to get down quickly but after a few steps down my feet shot out and I could no longer hang on and let go. I sulked for an hour or so under the blanket and when I got up found it quite painful but managed with many breaks to get going again and by the time the sun was going down hardly noticed anything remiss. I still had to get the halyard unshackled and there was no way I was going up that ladder so rigged the tackle that normally controls the main boom which is an 8:1 advantage and has a ratchet to boot so even if your hands come off the hoist rope it only lowers slowly. Pulling myself up was quite easy even with the swell but found I was about 30cm short so down again and rigged up an additional 4:1 tackle which normall y controls the main track. This was harder but manageable then up with the 8:1 and snap! unsnapped the halyard and coming down was easy. Each rest was shorter after that and with the heavy gal anchor shackles and swivel set with the bottle screw, or turnbuckle, a good sound solid stay, and other jobs completed like replacing the main sheets, replacing the tiller ropes of the self steering gear and going into the lazarette to tighten the control cables on the quadrant. And would you believe tidied up ropes and so on so should there be any reasonable breeze I can set sail first thing in the morning and a nice day sail down to photograph Cape Horn in lovely sunshine!