Day 2B – Mysteries

The trip for us has been full of lessons learned, as well as interesting mysteries.  This morning, Justin found another 6-7 inch squid on our deck for me to go pick up (yes, this is the second) – it is completely logical that the flying fish would occasionally end up on our deck (we’ve had two, as well), but we are a bit stymied as to how the squids have ended up as hitchhikers.  Maybe our white hull and a bit of phosphorescence is enough to attract one to the boat in dusk or dawn conditions, and then the hapless creature is placed on the deck by an angry wave (but…we had flat seas and light winds last night)?  Or maybe our friends, the shearwaters, have been making offerings to our boat that honors them with its name (but…as a biologist, I find this hypothesis highly unlikely, as I even half considered cooking the squids up – no bird in their right mind would drop such morsels!).  Or maybe the ichthyologists out there can confirm that squid actually do go flying through the air at times and sadly found our deck instead of the sea?

The other mystery onboard has to do with our big and bigger spinnakers – I have named them Monster and Super Monster. They are big sails that could probably net fish with the amount of sail that hangs into the water even with the spinnaker halyard fully hoisted (obviously, they fill with wind, and the sail then bellows out…but the key is to never allow the sail to just hang into the water…).  We put Monster up yesterday afternoon in the previously agreed upon “less-than-10-knot conditions”, and we went nice and fast until the sun started to set which triggered a second condition of flying for this sail – “no flying the Monster or Super Monster at night”.  So, we had to do a takedown, which theoretically should not have been a big deal.  We were dousing in reasonable conditions and wanted to try a “letterdrop douse” that Justin had read about (one of these new fangled techniques in the ten years we have been on sailing sabbatical).  The goal was to blanket the chute with the main, and pull it between the mainsail and the boom (hence the “letterdrop”).  Our procedure was to bear way off, ease the tack, ease the sheet, and then do a controlled release the halyard.  Seemed like a no brainer.

We bore way off, and I eased the tack after Justin had pulled the lazy sheet into our “letterbox” ready to bring in the rest of the monster.  The tack eased, but unfortunately, it promptly shot aft and then did a spectacular swan dive into the Atlantic, bringing the rest of the foot of the chute with it.  Did I mention that spinnakers make excellent boat brakes and rigging catastrophe makers?  Luckily, we aborted the procedure quickly enough for us to both run up to the bow to try and spill water out of the sail, and we hauled the foot up on deck.  We did a normal leeward takedown behind the main, with only a small tear in the foot of the sail, quite luckily.  We need to solve the mystery of getting these monsters down efficiently – maybe it is just going back to what we knew how to do well, but there’s a lot of information out there that we should review because surely there are some tricks of the trade.

Right now,  we’ve gybed and are heading east, towards the European continent – every mile we do now is one that gets us closer to the destination (versus just the northing we did yesterday to get out of the Azores High and into the wind).  We have about 20 knots and with the gennaker up, we’re doing well at 8+ knots in relatively flat conditions.

We’ve been eating well.  We thought it would be an excellent idea to bring some leftover pizza for our first lunch out yesterday, and there has never, ever been a better idea than that.  Next time, we’ll provision with a whole pizza, for two meals!  Justin has also been treating me to his signature dish of fried toast (Justin has three culinary specialties – fried toast, oatmeal, and he has been working on perfecting tacos as of late).  We might have gone a little overboard with bread in Horta, since we were making do with crackers for the last 10 days of the first leg, but the Azorean/Portuguese do fresh breads amazingly – soft and chewy with a crunchy crust.  It’s splendid.

Current position – 40 53.00n 26 59.00w
Miles to go – 827 nm
24 hour run – 121 nm