Ann sen this 2 hours ago.....Well one of those storm cells that were battering us a couple of days ago put an end to our sailing. One of the wires that holds up the mast started to fray. Rather than try any number of fixes I suggested Barry wisely said that we would take down all sails and motor. This stops any stress on the mast and will prevent the mast from falling over all together. I prevailed upon him to leave up the little storm staysail for stability and we are motoring. It was about 200 miles to go when we started the motor.
The storm cells would hit the boat and we would go from 3.5 knots to 7 in a minute and we would be off to the races. At one point we were down to under 2 knots and the boat was wallowing around. I convinced Barry to roll out about 1/3 of the genoa and we picked up a bit of speed. When the wind came up again we were struggling to roll the genoa in. The sheets (the lines from the sail to the back of the boat) were flailing about, whipping the outside edge of the dodger, the sail was flogging itself to death. I had two 10 centimeter dolls from Mexico hanging very close together from the dodger at the door way, one male, one female. They were supposedly good luck charms, I was quite attached to them enjoying watching them dance together as the boat rolled and swayed. The dolls were flopping around smacking Barry in the face as he desperately tried to roll the sail in. He got really mad at them and ripped them off the dodger and threw them overboard. When I noticed it today I asked why he couldn't have just thrown them below. He said he figured they deserved a burial at sea, better them than me !!!
We are currently motoring in calm seas under sunny skies, temperature about 28. Life if good once again. I wish we could have sailed all the way it would have been nice to say that we used the motor only for a couple of hours for this trip as opposed to our 80 hours we used it on the way from Tonga to Fiji. Oh well as long as we get there safely and in one piece all will be well.
Here are the predictions on the arrival.
Person date time
Lois Grabke 5/27/2010 14:58:00
Bob Shanks 5/26/2010 16:54:00
Doreen Shanks 5/27/2010 11:49:00
Ann 5/28/2010 9:30:00
Barry 5/27/2010 9:00:00
Aaron Cameron 5/27/2010 14:15