Race 3 - Day 16
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 16: Cape Town to Fremantle
16 November
Mikey and I replaced the bolt cutters on the quiet this morning. I don't think anyone noticed their absence. The things you have to do to get on deck and sail these days! We really don't want those kites flying any more this leg, we want to sail....
In case you can't remember, Mikey and I are the main sail repairers on Liverpool 2018. We have spent oh-so-many days buried under piles of grubby, damp spinnaker this leg, trying to work out if this small frayed edge should match back up to that tiny bit of frayed edge, or the other little fray 1cm further along the gigantic metres long tear. This, if you had not noticed, is James's speciality - breaking our kites (this may be a reputation versus reality thing now, why why let that stop a good opportunity to poke fun?). A typical day goes James hoists kite, Claire drops kite, and if Claire does not get to drop it in time, James breaks kite (but we love them both equally). Helen and Mikey repair kite. And repeat.
It is laborious and methodical work, requiring constant attention to detail and a tonne of patience. First off we squash a sail the size of a tennis court into a corridor perhaps 3 feet wide by 50 feet long. How it fits is anyone's guess. Next we tend to be faced with a knot of sail at least knee deep, or even thigh deep if we have done a really good job with the break. The wind blows in a constant direction - how, then, does one corner manage to circle its way repeatedly through the tear in the middle? And how does more than one corner find more than one hole to wind itself through? I remain baffled. Then we “run the lines” - make sure that each of the three edges (colour coded for convenience) is not twisted, and the body of the sail is sitting in the middle of them all which, in theory, should mean there are no twists remaining. Perfect - so long as all three edges are still in tact, which can be doubtful. During this process you are longing for an empty car park in Punta, or a large tent in Cape Town where you can spread the sail out and mentally start to map the tear pattern you are going to have to repair. But as you work your way along each sail edge, followed by the edge of each rip, you start to piece together in your mind how the repair is going to go – where to start, and which bit you really don't want to face until after a strong coffee.
As you can imagine, conditions onboard are perfect for this kind of detailed work. We get a “table”, otherwise known as a floor board, propped between the pole of the galley and the back of the saloon bench. 45 degrees is exactly the correct angle for Mikey and Helen to line up the millimetre precise matching edges ready for the sticky tape, only for the boat to bang and lurch, one half of the sail goes one way, the other a different direction, Mikey falls across the “table” and Helen sticks her hand to the saloon bench. Oops, that's not quite right, let's try that again.
But it's all OK, you get a sewing machine. Now I am pretty sure it works well on dry land, but boats are not dry, and electrical items and water are well known for not making the best bed buddies. Ours used to be well behaved, but is being difficult lately (you know you have been at sea too long when you start giving characteristics to inanimate objects). It is going to get a name soon, and you know it's not going to be polite! It has taken to stitching randomly, a bit like the children's hide and seek game: 1, 2, skip a few, 99, 100! And that's before we come to the tricky issue of stitching right in the middle of the sail. Getting a tennis court area sail in a corridor is one thing, getting half of it in that diddy little hole between the body and the needle of a sewing machine – that is quite something else.
After what seems like a lifetime below deck imprisoned behind loads of sticky back plastic, double sided sticky tape, and no doubt a empty bottle of washing up liquid in there somewhere, our Blue Peter moment has arrived! We get to say to Lance, “here's one we made earlier!” Having finally stitched the last pieces of clew back together, Mikey and I were preparing ourselves to return to our watches, remind ourselves of what the outside world looks like, and do some of that sailing malarkey, you know, the stuff we signed up for. Personally, this is the moment when I am torn. Part of me wants the crew never to fly the spinnaker again (we will only end up fixing it again); the other part of me wants it up straight away to see how the repair looks and to make all that time and effort worthwhile. So I have decided (James, take note) that I will settle for flying it immediately and us (James) never breaking another spinnaker. How's that for compromise!
There was a rumour that, due to the forestay damage, we would not be able to fly the spinnakers again before a permanent fix in Fremantle (quiet sigh of relief). And now I hear that James has fashioned a fix to our forestay that enables us to fly spinnakers again....nooooo...!
Written By Helen Lane