17/05/2014
The journey begins! The first day sees some South Westerly winds of about 14 knots which is ideal as I can only really relax when we are clear of Anguilla. The next few days alternates between light winds and heavy squalls accompanied by real rain that gets you wet and 30 odd knots of wind.
As I was on the early watch I visually checked the boat over as the light allowed and noticed that the webbing on the tack of the Genoa was fast coming away and this is not good. The stitching had been rotted by the UV, quite frustrating really as I was aware of this and asked a sail maker in Marin Martinique to go over the sail and re stitch any suspect areas. This he did, putting some stitches in the UV strip and gave the sail a clean bill of health, I won’t be going there again!
Once the sail had been removed from the forestay we set about a repair, four hours, four sail needles and a couple of muttered expletives later we had something resembling a repair that would with a fair wind, last to the Azores.
The next day a squall hit us and I managed to furl the headsail and sheet in the main. There was a twang as the outhaul inside the boom, for the tack of the sail parted. This took the lazy Jacks, and all the reefing lines out of the boom and then proceeded to knit a tangled spaghetti of lines which once wrestled into submission on the cockpit floor resembled one of Karen’s early Knot tying practice sessions (keep crossing the lines until there is no end left).