Crew Blog

Lessons learned

09 March 2008

How many people does it take to drop the yankee 1? How much spam do you need to sail to Hawaii?

Let’s start with the sail change. Yesterday, we were sailing along quite happily with the yankee1 until the wind disappeared, bringing us nearly to a standstill. The good old windseeker was brought into action and we had the yankee back up again in a few hours. No problem. Dropping the yankee 1 when there isn’t enough wind to fill it is relatively painless. We need one person on the halyard and four or five on the foredeck. It is an enormous sail, very heavy, and with acres of fabric desperate to throw itself into the water, but if the wind is light enough and the crew heavy enough, it is manageable.

But what if, for example, the wind had picked up wee bit. Enough, say, to need a reef in, or even perhaps a second reef. Might not be so easy. And if you decided that waiting for the other watch to wake up would take too long and you’d best just get on with it, then you may well be slightly down on numbers. And if, while discussing the plan to reduce the sail area, the wind and sea state both start to pick up, you might well realise that this was going to be a bit more difficult than the previous day.

And it was. Conditions were bad enough that we decided to hove to, to keep things under control. At least that way the sail would drop onto the deck, rather than in the water. But once the halyard was released, the sail just didn’t move. The 44 knots of breeze that had just kicked in weren’t helping our cause at all. It really looked like it wasn’t going to budge, until the Boy Moran got on the case. With a combination of muscle, sail ties and sheer determination, the Irish Legend showed us his amazing pulling power. The rest of the cavalry arrived, bleary eyed but willing, just in time to help get the beast (the sail, not Mick) under control.

Maybe we should have done that a bit earlier…

And the spam? How stupid would it be to get someone who’s just left the boat to do the victualling for the leg? We’re a wee bit nervous on Jamaica at the moment that we seem to be running out of nice food to eat. The hot chocolate’s gone, as has the mayonnaise, spaghetti, tomato puree, potatoes, carrots and baked beans. The supplies of biscuits and chocolate appear worthy of a ‘drop-a-dress-size’ diet, and we don’t even have any onions left. We’re about to go rifling through all the lockers and see exactly what we’ve got left over. We’ll not run out of food – don’t worry – but the next couple of weeks probably won’t be a culinary extravaganza. Another reason to look forward to Hawaii!