Wow, we have had some exciting events the past 24 hours. We are now at anchor at Bahia Santa Maria where we arrived at around 8:00pm last night.

The sailing the past two days have been interesting. Very confused seas and winds a constant 20-25 knots. Yesterday afternoon the winds were lightening up and we didn't want to slow down so we put up the red spinnaker. A couple of hours later the wind begain to build again and before we knew it the spinnaker had wrapped around the headstay. I'm still not sure what happened; I was below cleaning up the cabin when I heard commotion up on deck. By the time I made it to the foredeck, the headstay had a nice tight red spinnaker cloth cover. Uh oh. Now what? The spinnaker was wound really tight. Only about the top 1/6 of the spinnaker was flying freely No way it was coming down. We decided to motor into the anchorage and hopefully find a spot with little wind where we could send someone up the mast in a bosun's chair to try to untwist the sail and get it down. But if it is windy in the anchorage, then we have a problem.

Just outside the approach to Bahia Santa Maria we accidently gybed and the spinnaker started to unwind just a little. We gybed 2 more times and low and behold the spinnaker unwrapped itself. Everyone moved fast to the foredeck and got the spinnaker down quckly. We were all focused on getting the sail down. Lee says this was the luckiest day of his life. I didn't think it was possible to get that sail unwrapped. I was already imagining a call to EP Sails to order a new sail. We anchored with no problems in the bay but it was really windy and we would have had serious issues if the spinnaker had been still wrapped.

When we woke up this morning, we heard a boat had been beached on the point and was issuing a mayday. It was a single-handed boat that was not a part of the Ha-Ha fleet. The Grand Poohbah asked for assistance and Sirocco's MacGyver crew volunteered. Mike, David, and Matt hiked 3 milesfrom the lagoon to the beach with about 40 others and helped take everything they could off the boat. The owner wasn't injured but it appeared there would be no way to pull the boat off the beach so the decision was made to try to get everything off the boat. The guys said it was chaos with people using saws and other tools pulling up winches, instruments, and anything of any value and putting them in a pile. We're not sure what the owner will do now. I hope the boat wasn't his home.

While the crew was assisting with the beached boat, we worked on some small problems on Sirocco. Our port running light went out just as we were entering the anchorage last night. Luckily David had a flashlight with a red lens. The problem was a corroded connection under the deck. Mike and Wade came over from So Inclined to help diagnose and repair the problem. So Inclinded had their own fire drill when a halyard parted and caused his spinnaker to drop into the water. They were able to rescue the sail. Lee also finally found our water leak. We seem to be going through fresh water too fast so we suspected there was leak in the system somewhere. We should be able the replace the water we lost with watermaker water.

The forecast today was light winds at 10 knots but it's blowing a steady 20-25. Our anchor is holding well. The water is 75 degrees but the air is cool with the breeze.

Everyone is relaxing, reading, and enjoying the slower pace.