more toward motion sickness would probably be quite ill at this time and would have thoughts of jumping overboard or putting a gun to their head. So it is about this time we turn the engine on and head any direction that will get the boat a little smoother - doesn't always work. For some good reason God made Barbara and I where we don't get sea sick. I guess that's why we like doing this so much. So, continuing at about 6 or 6:30 am we start the process all over again.
On a boat this size things can break, come apart, or just stop working. There is no West Marine or Home Depot so you have to figure it out yourself. I have discovered that when an item breaks or needs fixing what ever amount of time you thought it would take you can usually multiply that many times. The next thing you find is the item you are working on is so hidden away that Harry Houdini would have a problem getting to it. We call fixing things the Yachty Pilates. The builder of the boat must have
derived great pleasure putting equipment where he knew it would be very difficult to find and fix.
Speaking of fixing things 2 or 3 days ago the topping lift on the boom let go. The topping lift supports the boom which holds the main sail to the mast. It is a line from the end of the boom to the top of the mast. Without that line attached you could never take the main sail in because the boom would come down into the cockpit. We were lucky to be able to save the piece of hardware that attaches the line to the boom otherwise I would have had to improvise with something else. Our next issue was
to retrieve the line attached to the top of the mast which has a pulley on the end so we could attach a line and put the topping lift back together. Here comes the fun part. The line that I needed to retrieve was a quarter the way up the mast and the only way to get it was go up there. It is scary going up the mast in port not to mention doing it in open water with rolling seas. We had no other choice. We waited until the seas were fairly calm which is very relative out here . I hooked up and Barbara
winched me up the mast. Everything went pretty smoothly in fact I was thinking that was pretty easy. We tied a line around the piece so we could walk it back to the end of the boom. Barbara let me down without incident and we went to put it all together. As I was piecing everything together the boat rolled and the line went flying out of my hand. I was very sad. This meant I had to go back up the mast. This time it was a little different because when I was going up I lost my grip, and off I swung
which would normally be alot of fun except on the way out I hit the wires holding the mast up and on the swing back in I slammed into the main sail. One time was not good enough I got to repeat this high wire act about 3 times. Please do not try this at home. In fact don't do this anywhere. Long story short we got the end of the line and successfully attached it to the boom. Back in business. Barb let me have a beer as a reward (which by our rules is forbidden at sea) and she cleaned and doctored
all my wounds. Just another day at sea.
They are not all that exciting in fact most of the time you don't feel like doing anything. Standing watches at night sort of takes a toll on you during the day. We end up taking a lot of naps. We have been experimenting with different watch schedules for the time between 9pm and 8am. We started with 4 hours on watch and 4 off. We then went to 3 on 3 off. Tonight we are going to try 3-4-3. No easy way to make this nice at night, one of us needs to be on deck at all the times and this gets very
boring and tiring.
A couple of other things about our life. We love to get your emails (kd0cff@winlink.org) that is a zero not an oh. We never get tired of watching another sunset or another sunrise. Life is good but we can't wait to get this part of the journey done. Until next time this is Destiny returning to 16, over.
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