As we were sailing past Cape Hatteras, Mark noticed that the genoa had suddenly developed a massive tear along the leach. [Pic from grass.] Mark cursed something appropriate to the situation and furled the sail and started the engine. At first, we thought about taking Northfork back into port in order to deal with the sail. We had 4 spare sails stored below, but we hadn't gone through them and frankly didn't know what was there and whether we had a spare genoa. There was also the issue that while we had handled traditional (non-furled) head-sails, we had not changed furled sails, much less ones like the Amel that have several tracks in order to handle having multiple sails at the same time.

But we decided if we were going to be out sailing, we need to be able to deal with stuff like this. Also, the weather wasn't so bad, so we figured this would be a good chance to screw up the head sail furler on our new boat.

Of course, just looking at a spare sail in a bag, it can be hard to tell what kind of sail it is. After some puzzling, we decided on a likely culprit that we dragged to the cockpit. These sails are enormous, were very heavy, and barely made it through the passages. We put our harnesses on and went forward on the boat, dragging the sail in its bag, along with a bunch of short pieces of line to use as sail ties. Mark was a bit concerned about not being able to put the replacement sail up after taking the first one down, so we brought a camera to take pictures of how the furling equipment was setup and ropes were tied.

The seas were very light, but Dana was already feeling a bit sick and that just got worse as we went onto the foredeck. Soon, she was taking occasional trips to the side of the boat to peer over the lifelines.

Dana lowered the halyard and Mark tried to fold the sail and keep it under control, worried a gust could grab it. As it came down, the sail seemed gigantic on the deck. We made the mistake of dragging it back to the cockpit without getting it folded well first. It wasn't for another day that we were able to get the sail folded well enough to stuff it into the sail bag. We raised the replacement sail and were surprised that we could get it up and working properly.