Race 1 - Day 27
Crew Diary - Race 1 Day 27: Liverpool to Punta del Este
16 September
Friday night, well Saturday since two hours now, and things are slowly calming down here on board of HotelPlanner.com. The past fourteen hours have been quite a stretch for both us, the crew, and our Skipper. Involved were four spinnaker drops and re-hoist, a couple of small holes, and finally a big one (all repaired as of writing this). But let's start at the beginning.
It all started with a calm afternoon under spinnaker. We all were in a good mood, and making steady progress toward our final destination, Punta del Este. The winds were in our favour, helping us slowly close in on the ships ahead of us, and gain on the ships behind us. The way to make that gap even smaller was to upgrade our Code 3 spinnaker (heavyweight spinnaker) to the Code 2 (mediumweight spinnaker)—which has a slightly bigger surface area. Only the bigger sail works better with wind from the back, so we waited for the right time to hoist. Finally, at about five o'clock we were busily changing spinnaker. A very quick re-hoist followed a timely drop. And all looked well for the Irish Rover. We increased our speed by about one knot, and for those of you who have read about project codename 101 it’s that extra knot we are constantly looking for.
And then it got even better. Just after we were done, the sun was setting behind us, we spotted whales on the horizon: everyone stopped what they were doing and looked. And just to our starboard side, only about 500 meters away, water fountain geysers and fins splashing caught everyone's attention. A few moments later we could see the first whale emerge from the water. We counted at least three of them, evidently feeding at that very moment. For about 30 minutes we observed the whales, watched them roll, jump out of the water, and splash around. Then, they were gone again. Dinner was served.
That would have been a perfect day, wouldn't it? But it wouldn't be clipper sailing if everything would have been smooth. Just before we handed over to the other watch, we spotted a hole in the sail. Very small, but it could have developed into something bigger. So the sail had to go down again and the old sail was hoisted. Chris Fox, our sail repair guru fixed the holes and almost all hands packed it again for the re-hoist. Job done. Or so we thought. We went on to changing the sail again, and just when we were putting up our newly fixed sail, things didn't go as planned. Things went wrong, and we tore a fist-big hole in the lower left side of the sail. Which meant, back to the drawing board. So, we packed the sail that had just come down as fast as we could—I'm sure you've read about the hardships of our spinnaker late-night packing in one of the previous blogs. Eventually, the old sail went up again. And by now about six hours had passed. Six hours that some of us had been working through regardless whether they have been on shift or not. At this point they all deserve praise for their hard work and effort.
While the ripped sail was being repaired, we discovered another problem that could develop into a serious one. One of our halyards, in fact the one that was carrying our spinnaker, had been twisted and tangled into a position in which there was a lot of pressure on one single point of the rope. Consequences could have been a ripped rope and a lost sail. The only solution, going up the mast and fixing it. Adam and myself did rock paper scissor to determine who's going to do it, and obviously the winner was allowed to go up. Sad to say, I lost. So Adam made his way up the mast, and untangled the halyard. Another crisis averted.
So as the Friday turned into a Saturday, we were to slowly get on top of our game. While the mast repairs were finalised, Chris, with the help of some handy helpers fixed the sail again, which a few minutes later was packed again. Only just to be ready for a hoist, again.
As we are now slowly getting the chance to go to bed, we know that it was worth it. Everything for that extra knot.