We were plodding along under poled-out jib during my off watch, and I was eager when I awoke to get the boat sailing well again. The wind had veered south, so we could set the main and un-pole the jib on a reach, so I went on deck to wrestle the pole off the jib.

Wrestling with the spinnaker pole is one of the trickiest pieces of short hand deck work at sea. We use the heavy full size spinnaker pole with a simple rig of a topping lift and a fore guy, relying on the jib sheet to pull the pole back. The topping lift holds the end of the pole up at the proper height, while the foreguy pulls the pole forward and can help control its swinging before the sheet is taught.

The pole attaches to a sliding socket on the front of the mast, which you can pull up or down a track with control lines. Setting the pole means working it around the inner forestay to the correct side of the boat, then hoisting the outboard end and strong arming the the free inboard end into the socket several feet up the mast. You have to clip the jib sheet into the outboard end of the pole, and hoist the inboard end to the proper height. At sea, this is done all while the boat is rolling from side to side and the pole (which weighs around 60 pounds or so) tries to slide overboard on one side, or swing into the stays on the other, all the while threatening the foredeck team (I.e., me) with being impaled and knocked overboard by a heavy blunt object, particularly while guiding the loose, swinging pole into the socket on the mast.

Since I expected the wind to back easterly again later in the day, I thought I would save some pole-wrestlIng by leaving the pole in its socket, raising the inboard end up the mast, and securing the outboard end. We have never tried this before, but I have seen plenty of sailboats with their spinnaker poles stored vertically on the mast this way.

It did not go well. As soon as I raised the inboard end, the pole started swinging violently in the roll. With only two hands, a heaving foredeck, and three lines to work, I couldn’t stop the swing in time. Of a sudden, the heavy pole crashed to the deck from a height of fifteen feet. The cast aluminum mast slide fitting for the pole socket had sheered, dropping the inboard end of the pole.

I wrestled the pole to its usual home on its storage mounts on the port side deck, then we set the main and got sailing again on a nice reach. I made pancakes. It's Saturday. I almost always make pancakes Saturday mornings. It started to drizzle, but let up enough to have pancakes in the cockpit. Then it really rained under a grey overcast sky during my watch at the helm.

When my watch was over at noon, I removed the broken slide from the mast and then dug around in our spares and repairs kits. I found a stainless steel strap that I could bend to fit around the stubs on broken socket slide to hold the pole socket pin in place. I took a break for the the noon sun sight (which is now a 1220 sun sight). Then I drilled some holes in the broken slide and screwed the strap in place with sheet metal screws. The stainless strap is probably nearly as strong as the thicker aluminum it replaced, but the screws and the now hole-ey aluminum base are certainly a bit weaker. Battery powered power tools are a godsend on passage!

By the time the repair was done, the wind had backed once again, so it was time to drop the main and set the pole on the jib with the repaired fitting. It worked fine, at least in the light to moderate winds we saw today.

The jib and pole were set again, but the wind had dropped, and we talked about setting our drifter (our large, spinnaker-like sail). But there were grey clouds and a veil of rain to windward, so we decided not to risk getting caught in wind squalls with the big sail up.

And so the afternoon went, with potentially squally rain clouds just to windward but light winds in fact. We lumbered along slowly in the swell. We were both left unsettled by the hardware failure - a stark reminder that we are over a thousand miles from anywhere and on our own. We really need the spinnaker pole rig to sail downwind comfortably. Losing that slide wouldn't kill us, but might add a week or two of unpleasant sailing to the passage.

Unless losing the slide drops a spinnaker pole on my head. We agreed to go back to our rule requiring helmets for foredeck work. And next time I will run the foreguy line aft to the cockpit so Robin can help tame the pole while she is at the wheel.

By six, the sky had cleared entirely and the sun set on the vivid horizon. We don't set the drifter at night, so we left the small Genoa jib up. Brilliant stars in a jet black sky lit up our dinner in the cockpit (garbanzos con chorizos, using up the red peppers that would not last another day).

I was hoping the brilliant stars would persist until my night watch, but, alas, when I awoke at 2200 the stars had dimmed with high clouds again and the black sky had greyed itself out. At least the wind picked up a little, so we are making a comfortable five to six knots downwind under our poked-out jib.