MURDER
01 May 2018 | USVI
Ag/sweating
the one thing about sailing you can generally rely on is silence. Now and again. When the engine isn’t running. Or the generator. Or tacking and flapping. And that’s when you realise sailing can be bliss. Wafting through the Virgin Islands on steady, reliable easterly trades has been pretty blissful.
Until today. The day before we head to a marina for the first time in six weeks to get ourselves and Brag sorted ahead of our various departures home, the Skipper decides to take advantage of our poor Norwegian friends Frank and Peder and take the main Sail down while we’re anchored in lovely but quite rolly Hawksnest Bay. This is our lovely new Sail with long batons which has made such a difference to BRAG’s sailing abilities. It was fitted last May in Largs by lovely Paul from Crusaders Sails who came all the way from Southampton to make sure the job was properly done. He said it was a bit tricky. And did a grand job. He also said it might be a bit tricky taking it off again but he would make a video and get it on YouTube before Christmas to make it a dawdle. I guess our Crusader Sail transatlantic eulogies mean Paul’s too busy for film making because so far no handy YouTube guide has premiered. And so it was that three grown men. At least two very experienced yachtsmen, struggled and struggled and climbed and pulled and cut and poked, and eventually got most of the rods out intact and the Sail was down. I should have mentioned we have the evil in mast furling Option. With the main Sail down, we are left with the evil bouncing foil inside the now empty mast, unprotected by a rolled up Sail. Crash. Bang. Wallop. All night long. Brian got up about 1am and got up on the boom with a long Boat hook and started stuffing yellow dusters into the mast to try to cushion it. I tried ear plugs. To no avail.
Ten miles to Sail (without a Sail = motor) so engine on to the accompaniment of Mast percussion. Worse than an in house Caribbean steel band without the tunes. And then four nights in a marina. There could be a murder.
PS Why must The Sail come off? BRAG’s going on the hard when she reaches Southampton and its obligatory to take all Sail off for safety reasons. When Brag gets to Southampton, I’ll be on granny duty in Bishop’s Stortford and Brian - ? Somewhere in the Atlantic...so the sails must come off now. Unless there is a murder...