Date: 2nd April 2005 Location: Under 500 miles to the line Weather: Sunny blue Sky Heading: At Cape Town
How difficult does it have to be? Talk about being set for an exciting finish to very close to 7,000 miles sailed. If I were safely tucked up alongside enjoying a beer and looking from an Internet café I would be really excited and probably thinking how great it would be to be involved in a race so close and thrilling even after all the miles. Being on the other side of all that and being responsible for some of the excitement, while I appreciate a close finish adds to the tension, it is really making the last 500 miles quite stressful.
Yesterday we awoke to find Spirit of Sark clearly pinpointed on the horizon directly astern of us. We had some great downwind sailing conditions and we started with our heaviest spinnaker reaching in light airs, as this spinnaker keeps his shape better and was more controllable in the huge swell that remained from the windy conditions that had preceded the morning.
The swell soon subsided and the breeze became more settled and more from behind us so we peeled to the lighter spinnaker. I didn't want to risk any slowing of the boat by dropping and re-hoisting so we executed a near-perfect peel to the new spinnaker.
The crew never fail to amaze me. After 20,000 miles, they still make basic mistakes doing a simple task that has been practised endlessly, like putting in a reef, but ask them to peel a spinnaker that some but not all the crew have probably done a couple of times before and it is performed inch perfect. How do they do that?
Frustrated with my crew, not me!
The sky looked quite dark ahead and the clouds were clearly building. The gusts were becoming more frequent and sustaining higher speeds. According to the latest weather grib file, we were meant to be in a 15-knot wind area. We were consistently in 20 knots, so we peeled back again to a heavier spinnaker because we are good at that manoeuvre, Sark was still firmly on the horizon. All was looking good.
Then disaster struck. As the gusts were becoming more frequent the swell also developed. Every now and again a wave would come and round the boat towards the wind. If this coincided with a gust the spinnaker was pretty powered up and life was looking on the edge. An intuitive ease of the mainsheet and spinnaker sheet so I could turn the boat further downwind and all was well. If caught, the boat would sail too high for the spinnaker and it would flap around a lot and make a whole host of noise and risk damage.
So when the gust of 28 knots of breeze came we were not quick enough off the mark and the boat rounded up. With power in her sails there is no correcting her with the helm alone. So as all hell broke loose on the deck I was left hanging on the wheel until she corrected herself.
An observation was made that there was a hole in the spinnaker and we should drop, then off we went again and the sail started to flog, that hole then exploded into a complete mess as the head of the sail flew free from the body and the edges slowly peeled themselves away from the remaining spinnaker.
With so much loose cloth we needed all hands on deck for the drop. Once all parts of the sail were rescued we checked we could reconstruct the sail and a sewing circle was established. We are not in a position to be off Cape Town in need of the flanker spinnaker and not have it available, then watch the competition sail past us. So needles at the ready, we went to work.
I estimate that the spinnaker will be ready to fly by Sunday afternoon, not a bad couple of days' work. The other great news is that although we did lose some miles we did hold onto the lead. So all is not lost and we just have to negotiate the light airs today and keep digging deep.
Dee Caffari, skipper Imagine it. Done
Dee Caffari - press report/Yachting World, 2 April 2005
