Panama to Galapagos: Day 3 - Genneker

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

I woke up this morning to the sound of the Genneker sail going up (a big, colourful, light-wind, down-wind sail that just parachutes in front of your boat catching as much air as possible). Jan and Gary were trying to raise it and catch some of the light wind we were having. Unfortunately, the sock got stuck halfway up when raising it and the winds were picking up slowly. (The genneker sail is rolled up inside a big sock-like thing that "slides off" and upward after you've raised it and the sail fills with air. Think of a handkerchief stuffed in a condom.) I jumped out of bed to give them a hand. Shortly after, the sock un-stuck itself and the full genneker was up, but the winds were starting to get too strong. We had to get it down as quick as possible, and it was not easy. Minnie got up shortly after and we had all-hands on deck trying to bring this beast down. You are supposed to release the clew of the sail and then pull the sock back down over the flapping sail. Then you would just easily lower the big sausage-like mass of sail down to the deck and roll it up. However, the force on the sail was incredibly powerful already. The sail was starting to bend and break the shackles holding it to the boat, and we could not untie the clew. I ended up just cutting it with a knife before things got any worse. The sail flapped around like mad and we could NOT bring it down. Minnie and I tried pulling down on the line leading to the head of the sail, but it just lifted us and slipped out of our hands (luckily we had gloves or the rope burn would have been horrific). We ended up forcing the sail into the water and doing a wet-retrieval (the weight of the water in/on the sail holds it down for you so the wind can't keep it up). The sail ended up under the boat, with the full weight of the boat on it, so it took a long time to pull it onto the deck.

So, it was an exciting morning! This was after only 2 hours of sleep too.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxed though, nothing big happened. Minnie and I saw some odd blinking lights on the horizon though on our night watches. We are hundreds of nautical miles from land, and over 9,000 feet depth of water, so it couldn't have been buoys or fishing boats? Must be aliens or some secret government-testing site I guess...