Busy, busy, busy. An eventful 24 hours on board!

We started our morning watch with the Code 3 spinnaker on deck, ready to launch. Flying a kite is quite an ask for our small watches, but we need the power and speed over our main and Yankee we’ve been relying on.

It’s all plugged in correctly. I check the lazy sheet is over the bowsprit and we hoist. First niggle – tack is around the body of the kite. Quick release, untangle and continue. Perhaps a portent of things to come…

Kite is up. The Yankee is dropped and then the kite opens on a gust. Imagine your Korea is suddenly massively powered up and heads up. The lazy sheet drops below the bowsprit and we can’t fly it properly. A drop is called for and we try to set up – the lazy sheet is pulling in the water and is really hard to get up to the boom “letterbox” and then over onto a winch via a turning block/hook. Before we can grind the clew in, another gust hits and the Code 3 gives our boat a huge hug, cuddling up to the inner forestay and wrapping around it. Several times. A group hug with the staysail and Yankee halyards eventually caught up too.

For anyone on our boat in Leg 1 this would be a familiar appearance with a balloon at the top of the inner forestay.

This time we managed to recover after several hours. Our AQP/Mate spent some time aloft trying to unwind the head after we tried from the bottom. The complex wrap wasn’t helping though. We gybed and with some good luck the wrap unwound a bit. Pulling on the clew and working on the top, with halyards unwound where possible, the kite was eventually tamed and brought to the deck with only a small tear from a spreader which took only an hour to fix.

Quite an eventful morning with no problem with the cold due to lots of grinding.

Poseidon though extracted another fee from me. I lost my Spinlock tripping spike/fid on releasing the kite tack at the front of the boat. It stuck in the quick release shackle and on releasing it at arm’s length, and deliberately not tied to me as I hadn’t wanted to get caught, it wobbled in my hand and is now mid-pacific at 5000m. Enjoy Your Majesty.

Safe seas.