More in 17 hours than in 17 days!
Sadly I am not talking about mileage, but instead kitemares. Race 12 from New York to Derry-Londonderry saw us have a totally kitemare-free 17 day Atlantic crossing. Within 17 hours of starting Race 13 (I guess it must be an unlucky number for our kites!) we had had two.
The first was during a kite drop last night that didn’t go quite to plan.
MMTS (Mr Medium Weight the Second) ended up in the water and a slight tangle in the halyard meant that when we tried to run the halyard free to let the head of the kite trail and not fill up with water, it didn’t run free. The result of this was a seam blowing from the water pressure of the boat dragging the kite along filled with the North Atlantic.
The second kitemare was as we were preparing to gybe just to the south of the Flannan Isles in the middle of the afternoon. All was set and ready to go. As we prepared to bring the main sail in the was a "slight incident" that involved getting two lines confused and the wrong one was let go.
With the tack accidentally being let go as we were all set for a gybe it meant that we were not quite all set for a drop, so with some lines getting tangled around some stuff and the heavyweight spinnaker in the water it all started to go a bit wrong.
We managed to get the boat slowed down as much as we could and do everything that we could to stop the kite from getting caught up on the keel/rudders/prop as it went under the boat.
Having let the halyard run once again, we were at risk with losing the kite altogether as both sheets were also free to run. Securing both sheets to winches was done very quickly until we were able to get the halyard on one of the stern cleats.
With the halyard secured the sheets were let go to allow the kite to trail through the water, instead of filling up with water. All sorts of rope work followed in order to get the halyard on to a primary winch and drag the heavyweight out of the sea under the bottom guard wire.
With one kite torn, another in a massive wet tangle down below, too much wind for the light weight kite and no spinnaker halyards rigged to use we have spent remainder of the day sailing under white sails as we sort out the aftermath of the kitemares.
As I type this we almost around the Butt of Lewis, hope fully by the time you read this we have made it past Dunnet Head, the most northern tip of mainland Scotland. This will be not only the most northerly latitude reached on this race, but also the whole round the world race, one of the final mile stones left between us and London.
It’s been a long action packed day aboard IchorCoal, here's to hoping tomorrow is a little less stressful!
IchorCoal OUT!