Quick thinking and fun at the helm!
Daily Update from Hadley
It was a busy morning, looking up the rig we noticed the third batten box was askew around 0800. There had been issues with the screws falling out of these boxes already so we were luckily prepared with spares. Hoping to solve this issue quickly we put the third reef in the main and I went up the mast to try and clamp the two pieces of the box together aloft. Proving unsuccessful we lowered the sail and tried again with the batten on the boom. Also unsuccessful we ended up bringing the top third of the main on deck and fixing the batten box on deck. Plenty of loctite and some duct tape over the screws, we checked all the boxes again before hoisting the main back to reef 1. Three and a half hours later we're back to making great time down our route.
Update from Marie-Claude
There is a job onboard that everybody likes and can do in these gentle conditions: helming. So every half hour, the helm changes hand without fail with the next crew member looking at her watch to claim her time of fun.
This means that there is no space left for me unless there is a manoeuvre! I had my time at the helm when we took a reef this morning and hanged on to the helm for a little while before giving it back. So this afternoon at the first opportunity I declared that the wind had dropped sufficiently enough to shake the reef out and had another time at the helm... 😎
I think that for now on we will have to take a reef and shake out at least once a day 😂 I might alternate it with a sail change!
