The wind finally went behind us (it has been pretty much light headwinds and some calms so far this trip), so the mainsail could come down (the other sails stayed set) for some minor work. The slides that attach the sail to the sail track in the mast were originally attached with toy plastic shackles--too weak for the job, but designed to fail so that damage to the sail itself was prevented. Since the shackles all failed so frequently, they have been slowly replaced by either thin rope (which works, but doesn't stretch much to absorb shocks), or shock cord (which is what I'm sewing on in the picture).