As I’m sure you have noticed on the Race Viewer, we have been flying along the last couple of days in the trade winds navigating our way north and south, around some of the islands of Micronesia. Life on board is getting more comfortable as the temperature drops, it's still 34°C below deck, but that's much better than the 40+ we did have.
Everything was going smoothly until a wind shift and a collapsed spinnaker turned tranquil Champagne sailing, into organised chaos. Normally, a collapse isn't a problem. Grind the sheet in, turn away from the wind, the spinnaker refills and off we go again. Unfortunately, this time our much-worked Code 3 (smallest but most rugged spinnaker) decided it had had enough and split down the middle.
Shouts of “it’s torn we need to get it down” were made. Scramble time began, as crew below deck threw on their life jackets, and rushed up to help. Everyone sprang into action, down came our damaged sail, up went the Yankee, and staysail a slight adjustment in course to account for the different sail plan, and we were off racing again.
After a quick inspection by our dedicated sail repair team of Zina and Fausto, it was decided that it was too big a job to undertake on board and would have to be done in Ha Long Bay.
Dan, Laura and the UNICEF team