Last night Mark checked on the sails to find our ballooner had a massive tear in it. There was a long tear along much of the foot of the sail and a yet longer one up the leach. The ballooner is made of a thin material and since we didn't catch it immediately, it grew very quickly. We're not sure what the cause of the tear was. The sail is almost 10 years old; the forward lazarette it is stored in has had a problem with water leaking in that we are still working on fixing (so it has been stored wet much of the time; some of the irregular wind we have had lately has caused a good deal of luffing and fluttering. At any rate, we lowered the torn sail into its locker to be dealt with later. Apparently, it is possible to get tears (even as large as these) repaired, though we may decide it is time for a new sail.

It never rains but is pours... Later that night, Mark noticed a couple of small tear in our genoa. As the wind has shifted dramatically, we had taken the genoa off the pole. However, we had left the undeployed pole mounted on the side of the boat and with some of the shifts in winds there had been some abrasion with the hinge in the pole and the genoa, causing a number of small tears. Mark spent a good part of today with the genoa lowered on the foredeck and cleaning the sail and attaching sail repair tape to these tears. The sail now appears to be serviceable and is working fine. We are clearly going to have to spend some time on our sails in the next several months, or perhaps make a visit to a sail loft in Papeete (if there is one). Just as we were about to re-raise the genoa, Mark noticed one of the short guide poles on the genoa furling car was bent... another item we will have to attend to after completing the passage.

Yesterday afternoon, we managed to complete the servicing of two of our winches. The large electric genoa winch is quite a contraption but we managed to piece it back together with only a few glitches. Dana's work on her first winch went flawlessly and she has now been commissioned as the Northfork's CWW (Chief Winch Wench).

Dana handled our check-in with the Pacific Net on the SSB and was asked to take over as operator for the net when the current operator, Kittywake, arrives in the Marquesas in a couple of days. This job entails initiating the twice-daily calls on the designated frequencies, asking if there are any emergencies, take location and status of any boats that check in, and then chat with the other people calling in. The current operator has helped a coordinate a number of issues for the other boats. The largest issue has been to arrange for assistance in arriving in port for a boat whose engine is broken down; the problem is that the port it is making land at has an opening in its coral reef that the boat will heed help negotiating. Given that we are late in the season and there are few boats currently on this passage, there shouldn't be much to doing this. Dana will be chatting with the current operator to get instructions tomorrow.

Everything else has been going ok. The weather is still very mild and today has been overcast much of the day. The weather has been perhaps the most surprising aspect of this passage, as we had expected it to be blistering hot.