Midnight Friday night and just about to come off of a 4 hour watch when the winds really started to build and the sails were becoming overpowered. I stayed up to help Mike and Greg make some sail adjustments so that we could sail smoothly through the night. Best laid plans and all that…
We started off with a reef in the jib and 2 reefs in the main. Happy that that should tide us over til morning, I retired to my bunk.
Despite the reefs, the boat was still unbalanced; the jib was constantly luffing and the boat was rolling from side to side. It was impossible to sleep and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared by all the banging and crashing, even though I know Rapture is a solid boat. A couple of restless hours later Mike finished his watch and came to bed.
Rapture just wouldn’t settle, she was banging and crashing her way through the night in some kind of protest. Maybe she was upset that the rest of the yachts had gone south to the sunshine and we’d kept her north in the wind and clouds.
The cacophony continued and then suddenly Mike was out of bed like a rocket. Stopping to put his life jacket on but not his trousers and proceeded to spend the next hour and a half scrambling around the foredeck above me in his undies.
The wind had continued to shift and the jib just wouldn’t settle so Mike and Greg had tried to furl it in completely but in the process had managed to get an hour glass wrap in the sail and so had to go through the laborious task of fixing it all the while with big rolling waves soaking them and throwing them off balance.
Sleep finally came for both of us around 3 am which meant just 2.5 hours of sleep before my next watch and an extremely busy day…..but more to come on that later.