With only about 250 miles to Guadeloupe, we are preparing Avocet for arrival.

To start reading about my transatlantic adventure from the beginning (highly recommended) follow this link.

Day 23,

Sunday, February 20, 2022, 10:10AM

SOG 5.3

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Sailing wing on wing, light winds, light seas equals a slow boat, 5ish knots.

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I made Mahi Mahi Chowder for lunch today: butter, flour, garlic, chicken bouillon cubes (yup, I used them), water, potatoes, canned corn, canned mushrooms, dry thyme, black pepper, salt, canned evaporated milk and a lot of diced up Mahi Mahi. It came out really good, surprisingly John had three bowls, he is usually a light weight. Jens and Dennis each had 2 and I had 1.

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Yesterday at dusk we were flying the spinnaker, it was the beginning of our Cocktail Hour, when the wind picked up to be a bit too much for the spinny. We decided to take it down. Well, that was not an easy task. The spinnaker is an asymmetrical spinnaker which means that it is shaped in a way that it doesn’t need a pole to hold the sails clew, aft most triangle, in place. It basically flies free, attached to the boat at the top with a halyard to lift and lower the sail. A line at the tack, the forward most triangle at the bow of the boat and a line at the clew. We adjust these lines based on wind speed, wind direction and boat direction. An asymmetrical spinnaker will often come with a “sock”, when you pull up the sail it is conveniently covered in this sock, the sock’s opening is at the bottom of the sail with just the clew and tack sticking out of the sock, attached to their respective lines and ultimately the boat. There is a continuous line going the full length of the sock that when you pull it one way it pulls the sock up exposing the sail to the full force of the wind. Conversely when you pull it the other way it lowers the sock pulling the sail into the lowering sock, making it no longer open to the wind, forming a long thin sausage looking thing. Well, this didn’t work. The spinnaker was stuck open, with the wind continuing to pick up, this was not good. We needed to get the spinnaker down before it tore or worse, fouled something in the standing rigging or went under the boat. The sock was not an option so we needed to lower the sail onto the deck, this is not easy when the wind is strong, as you lower the sail the wind just pushes it away from the boat. Heading up into the wind will alleviate this, but, if you go too far into the wind it can be disastrous, almost definitely tearing the sail. John, as usual, steered the boat into the perfect position for us to get the sail onto the deck with no damage. Once on the deck Dennis and I manually stuffed the spinnaker into the sock, hoping that tomorrow will bring lighter wind conditions for us to raise the sail again and figure out what went wrong with the sock.

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When the spinnaker was bagged and tied to the deck. We reefed the mainsail and raised the staysail. We were once again sailing with the right sail plan, so we got back to enjoying Cocktail Hour. We purposely went light on today’s fixings for Cocktail Hour- pistachios. John and I had some white wine, Jens and Dennis had a bit of Irish Whiskey for their daily libations, I did spill Jens’ drink while we were reefing the main. It was dark and he did leave it wrapped amongst the reef lines, which when he put it there we didn’t know that we were going to reef the main. I felt bad, especially because of the dwindling supply of grog, but I got over it quickly.

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During the day we got the boat ready for our arrival, clearing the deck of all extraneous crap, organizing the trash and recycling, retrieving the anchor from the “pit” and reattaching it to its’ chain and securing it to the bowsprit. We placed the anchor in the “pit” before departure for several reasons: too much weight on the bow, it could become dislodged from its cradle in rough weather, which could cause huge problems. The anchor chain comes out of a hole at the top of the chain locker that we wanted to stuff and duct tape it, blocking any water coming over the bow from swamping the chain locker, adding even more weight to the bow and possibly seeping into the boat. As well as when you’re in thousands of feet of water there is really no need for an anchor with 200 ft of chain, it won’t do you much good.

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I went to grab John a Coke from one of the coolers on deck and was surprised to find most of the cans in the cooler had split from so much jostling around, making quite a sticky syrupy mess. Dennis and I cleaned it out, throwing away about three-quarters of the cans in the cooler.

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