Well, THAT happened.
About 4:30 yesterday morning, the wind died. Then in picked up again.
Within five minutes, all hell had broken loose. At about 10:00 this
morning, we were finally racing again. In that 28.5 hours, I got about
three hours of sleep. Some people got less. Three different people went up
into the rigging, each multiple times. And we completely destroyed a kite.
Was it just two days ago I was talking about reliable but uneventful trade
wind sailing?
It all started in thick darkness, heavy cloud blocking out the moon and
something between thick fog and drizzle all around. It wasn't easy helming
conditions, but we were dealing with it and making good time. I popped down
to put on a jacket. Shortly after I got back on deck, the wind died down.
We gave it a minute, then went to wake Matt for guidance. By the time we
woke him, the wind was back but coming from the wrong side. I think we
accidentally gybed thanks to the dark and the reduced steerage, though it's
possible the wind shifted. I still don't know. Regardless, as we started
setting up to gybe properly, the rain started bucketing down and the wind
came up with a vengeance, easily 50 knots, probably more. We tried to shift
gears to dropping the kite, but it was too late. The sheets were wrapped
together, the kite itself was around both inner and outer forestays and
tied into the wrap net, halyards were tied into everything. It was a mess.
We fought for hours trying to get it down. We got it partially under
control, lashing some of it down but unable to do anything about a big
balloon of sail half way up the inner forestay. We tried to unwrap it. We
tried to pull it down. People climbed up to try crush it down with their
legs and tie sail ties around it. we tried to use other halyards to depower
the sail, but it just wrapped them in. None of it worked. At about 1pm, we
headed toward land to try find a sheltered spot to make the work easier.
We tried again and again. We tried to remove the inner forestay, a huge
piece of work, but we couldn't get at the pins we needed to remove. We
tried to crush down the bubble a few more times. Eventually, we decided to
sacrifice the kite and cut big gashes in in, hoping the wind would flow
through rather that powering it up. Instead, it just flogged more. Finally,
we took the most extreme step and cut across the head of the bubble,
loosing it from the forestay. That did it. We were able to unwrap most of
the kite, though we ended up also having to cute off the head, which
dropped into the water and floated off. We can't even put the thing back
together now, but nobody really cares. We're just happy to be done with it.
It took a few more hours to unwind everything and put back together what we
could, and finally we were sailing again.
We have relatively small sails up now, trying to let people get a bit of
rest. Not sure yet how much damage this has done to our race standing, but
it can't have been good. In Matt's Skipper Report, he called this the worst
kite wrap he'd ever seen, so there's some comfort in knowing we weren't
undone by something simple. Still, these things are partly luck and partly
failure or technique, so it's also a bit disappointing to be involved in an
epic disaster.
On the bright side, I've now seen the Philippines! However, I don't think
it counts as a country visit, since I didn't clear immigration or have a
meal. I didn't even have hot dogs and marshmallows on a toothpick! (Thanks
to Sam and Sumo for that cullinary experience.)
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