Race 3 - Day 14
Skipper Report
14 November

Right now, we are in a favourable band of wind, about 18 knots from the northwest, which is helping us along nicely towards Fremantle.

Last night we had our biggest spinnaker wrap yet - it happened at watch changeover as the wind was building, and only took a lapse of concentration for a few moments for the Code 2 (mediumweight) spinnaker to wrap itself round the inner forestay. The anti-wrap net was flying at the time but still the spinnaker managed to tangle itself... it did a good job. After trying to grind the sheet without success and a quick assessment we decided it needed to come down. It took Adam Cristol to go to the top of the mast to undo the halyard and most of the rest of the crew on the foredeck doing a maypole dance to untangle it. Every sail-tie on the boat was in use to hold the spinnaker together in an effort to stop it re-inflating, this worked!

Thanks to quick thinking and efficient teamwork the situation was brought under control swiftly and the spinnaker remains in one piece, suffering from only a few small holes that Mary Frawley, Sara, Knowles and Carsten Busk had fixed within the hour. The Code 2 is now flying again and the team deserve this slice of success having once again unravelled the problem.

Conall