A windy morning, I spent the night with just the staysail up but we didn’t make as good an angle or speed as we should have, on the plus side it was a more comfortable night. I’ve put the main back up with 3 reefs in it and we are jerking along again a little faster and a little closer to the wind, it all helps, the wind is Wly abaout 23 knots at the moment with about 3-4m sea so it’s pretty miserable, wet and uncomfortable.
Just after I’d written my blog yesterday I turned downwind which took the wind out of the genoa as it was sheltered by the main. By lowering and hoisting the genoa a little the two parts of the foil came together again which was very pleasing, it means that there’s no damage up there other than the missing screws. I have a plan for a calm day to lower the sail and remove the splice on the halyard which is preventing me from getting good tension on the luff, I replaced the halyards with thicker ones with additional anti chafing sleeves and the diameter of the whole thing at the splice seems to be too much to go past a fitting at the top of the mast. If I pull the splice out and whip the end I can tie the halyard to the sail fitting and the rope should then pass without difficulty through the fittings allowing me to get a little luff tension. I’m not sure if the slack luff is contributing to the foils wanting to separate but it’s quite possible. An additional benefit of a knot at the masthead is that if the halyard starts to chafe on the top fitting I can pull a bit more rope through the sail before ting a new knot so that the chafe is in a different area.
The tiller lines from the self steering, i end for ended the port one, the outer cover of the rope, the super tuff non wearing bit has worn through and the line is now running on the core dyneema, I’ll have to keep an eye on it and replace it when it is worn. Hopefully I’ll get a few more days from it.
My Tomato, pepper and cheese salad was good, I forgot the olives but it wasn’t missing them particularly.
The rice pudding worked but stuck to the saucepan causing some extra work washing up. I ended up just having the rice pudding for dinner, the spag bol will probably be for tonight. It was too uncomfortable to contemplate having the pans on the go at the same time (pasta, sauce, pud).