Rain and Overcast Skies Followed by a Bit of Excitement

Early the next morning (June14) it began to rain and continued to rain most of the day. Oh it is so nice to have good foul weather gear!!! It cleared up to only 60% overcast for a couple of hours in the afternoon before clouding back up again. The winds gradually picked up and by evening we were averaging 9 knots. While it is nice to go fast (and yes I realize 9 knots isn't fast to you stinkpotters!) the winds continued to increase and the seas were getting bigger and bigger. The foul weather gear became more protection from the dousing from the waves than from the rain! There was no more quietly sitting behind the helm with a cup of coffee or tea while Carlos (our windvane) drove the boat as I was doing in the photo from the early morning. We finally decided to heave to and wait it out. Twelve hou

rs later we got under way again with seas down to about 8-10 feet. The skies continue to remain mostly overcast.

The 16th of June brought dinner in the guise of a bluefin tuna. The skies continued to be overcast with seas about 8 feet. We saw the first ship we had seen for days that evening and early the next morning we saw another sailboat. We actually saw its light first while it was still dark. They were a 47' sloop called Quetzal also heading for the Azores, but a faster boat than us with an ETA several days ahead of us. A few hours later we were nothing but a speck in their wake.

For most of the remainder of the trip the weather remained cold and more overcast than not. (Now I realize that cold is a relative term and what was cold for us having lived in the Caribbean for the la

st few years may not be cold for you cold weather climate people.) We all Layered up. Michael and I preferred to wear our foul weather gear over clothes, while Josie just kept adding layers only putting on rain gear if it was actually raining.

The 19th and 20th of June brought SE winds blowing 25-30 with higher gusts. Seas were running 8 feet and higher with breaking waves banging on the hull. Then came an especially loud bang and snap around 1400. Looking forward the jib seemed off and as I continued to look upward I saw to my horror that the furler had snapped from the mast and the only thing holding the whole thing up was the halyard! Josie and I were on watch but Michael was already asking "What was that?" and I am yelling back "The jib has come loose from the mast! All hands on deck!"

Michael comes up to see and yells"!?**" (Sorry, those of you who know Mike can pretty much guess, the rest of you will have to use your imagination.) Michael set up the sidestays for the inner forestay (for added support and to eventually run the staysail.) Michael and Just

in then manhandled the rollerfurler to the deck with Josie managing the halyard and Tracy at the helm. Sorry, no pictures of the process, (but in the photo to the right you can see the rollerfurler along the right side of the deck.) We were all too busy trying not to lose either the mast or the rollerfurler with jib into the sea. A quick response from all crew and the only thing we lost was our ability to sail with any speed.

Without the jib we could not make much forward speed on an upwind sail. Fortunately the wind was behind us most of the time, but this was still not ideal as the inner forestay side stays come well back of the mast and interfered with the ability to let the main all the way out. Also being the cautious sailors that we are we kept the main reefed for the rest of the trip. (We really did not want to risk losing our mast!! We would rather go slow and get there eventually.) A reach would have been the ideal point of sail for our limited sailing capability. Unfortunately that didn't happen very often either.

Later that night as the wind and seas continued to pick up we hove to again. We were still about 900 miles away from the Azores when all this happened. The slow going cost us a lot of time and we lost even more getting caught up in an eddy with the current against us. While we were hoping to make the crossing in close to 21 days it ended up taking 28. We were glad to arrive in Flores safe and with minimal damage.