New Year’s Day!

Been a while since the last post, here’s a little blog I wrote on New Year’s Day at the time. Leg 4 and 5 blogs to follow soon 😀

New Years Day!

Well, it started with a yankee 2 – yankee 1 racing headsail change on the hour at midnight. Qingdao was visible on the horizon behind us and the previous watch had been fending them off well, but to keep them at bay we decided a bigger headsail was needed now. It was a beautiful evening with clear skies, a nice 15knot breeze and the stars and milky way shining every so bright overhead.

There’s something surreal about cheering in the new year and hugging team mates in the sail locker whilst surrounded by damp sweaty sails.

The yankee 1 was shoved out the hatch by the off watch and heaved on deck by crimewatch. We then had a cup of coffee to get everyone geared up for the change, and then I jumped out into the bowsprit to hank on the new sail under the old one. This is a tricky task which involves lifting a large weight of sail up, whilst trying to one handedly open the Hank and attach it to the forestay whilst it moves around as the boat rolls over waves. There’s 22 hanks on a yankee 1. The yankee 2 was dropped, the plan to unhank it from the forestay as she comes down, however the first one was welded shut with salt from being on for several days. Instead we dropped on top of the 1, then used some pliers to take the stiff hanks off. Pull the sail out of the way then hoist the new one. It went very smoothly, as did flaking (folding) the sail back into the bag to be stored down below. The rest of the watch was spent trimming and holding off Qingdao who were visible off our stern, around 6 miles behind.

New Year’s Day dawned brightly, Ian and Giando made lovely scrambled eggs for breakkie. Little did we know we were to need all our energy for the next adventure.

Qingdao had been held off all night, but had been seen to hoist a kite and were slowly gaining ground. The only thing for it was to hoist our own favourite sail, the code 2. Sheets run, everyone prepped for the hoist, a multitude of little issues snowballed into an epic disaster. With the words of skipper Rich fresh in our ears from a couple of nights ago (“ you’ve not seen a bad recovery until you’ve pulled one in through the A frame at the back…”) I watched the disaster unfold. First the tack line(the front corner) had not been pulled tight, so the kite was hanging low into the water. In combination with poor wooling and an unfortunately slow sail sweat, meaning it was in the water for long enough to break the wool and the kite inflated only 2/3 of the way up. The lazy sheet decided to join the party too and wrapped around the tack, meaning we were now dragging the kite through the sea by two points, like a giant trawler net!

Quickly the tack was tripped, and the sheets allowed to run, leaving the sail attached by the halyard. The retrieval line was fished from the sea at the back of the boat and first we ground this. The boat was heaved too, to slow us down so the weight of the water didn’t rip the kite, however this did mean the kite drifted perilously close to the rudders. The line was fed back out so the kit was behind the boat and one of the sheets again fished out the sea and pulled though the A frame. Several sheet repositions and an all hands on deck call later we were able to all pull in unison to pull the kite from the sea. On this occasion we were lucky. The quick thinking of the skipper allowed us to retrieve the kite with minimal damage (only three small holes) and continue on our way. Sadly we did have to watch Qingdao slip away from our grasp, but we will reel them in again for sure!

For now the more pressing issue of lunch and when to serve the New Year’s Day cheese and cracker selection with some non alcoholic sparking grape juice 😉