Rough Passage

We left Maupiti en route to Penrhyn in the Cook Islands on a beautiful day with perfect wind. Penrhyn is northwest of Maupiti and the eastern trade winds put the wind just aft of the beam. If the wind stayed this way the whole passage, we were in for an easy, fast, four day sail.

We got into passage mode pretty quickly, alternating our shifts overnight. We had consistent wind and hardly any squalls. I had pre-made food that made dinners easy to prepare. And, our average boat speed was pretty good for this old boat. It had all the makings of a great passage.

That all changed after a couple of days. As I was on watch, suddenly the mainsail came sliding down the mast and I hollered out to Mike as loud as I could to wake him up. We had lost the main halyard. (For non-sailors, that is the line that is used to raise our mainsail.) Mike came out and looked at me like I must have been joking until he turned around and saw the sail falling off the boom and onto the deck. I think there were a few expletives coming out of his mouth at that point.

A month earlier back in Tahiti we had noticed some chaff on the line just above where the line attaches to the sail. Mike went up the mast and thought he could see where it was chaffing at the top of the mast and came up with what he thought would fix the problem. At this point we realized that it didn’t work. We didn’t have a way to run another main halyard while at sea. In order to do that, Mike would have to climb to the top of the mast and figure out a way to run a line inside the mast that I could fish out of a hole toward the bottom. We had close to 20 kts of wind and at least a 2 meter swell that would make that impossible to do here.

We started brainstorming what we could do to try and use our mainsail. If we couldn’t use the sail, we would be sailing with just our jib which would slow us down at least a day and make it a rolly, uncomfortable ride. We have a spinnaker halyard that comes off the top of the mast, but the front of the mast, not the rear like the main halyard. Mike decided we could try and use that, but he would have to go up the mast to the spreaders to move it. I watched below helping hold the line while he put his harness on and climbed up the mast in the rolling, pitching sea.

Because the line came out the mast at the front and would have to wrap around to the rear, we weren’t going to be able to pull the mainsail to its full height. So, we got it up to the second reef point and turned back toward Penrhyn.

A day later the winds started to back off, and with our reefed mainsail we just weren’t getting enough speed. We wanted to make it to Penrhyn in daylight on Thursday. If we didn’t make it in before the sun was down, we would have to wait at sea overnight to go in through the pass on Friday morning. We were both pretty motivated to get there at this point.

Mike looked at the spinnaker halyard and thought we might be able to get the sail up to the first reef point, which would get us more sail and help us move a bit faster. We turned up into the wind and raised the sail, tightening down the first reef line. When we had turned back the direction we needed to go, we realized the foot of the sail looked a bit baggy. We don’t use the first reef point very often and decided the car needed to be moved back a bit to get a better sail shape. To get the most power out of your sail, you’ve got to have the shape of the sail right.

So, a plan was made to turn back up into the wind, release the reef line, move the car back, re-reef and then head back in the right direction. When we reef the mainsail on Adagio, we have to tie the excess sail down to the boom so it doesn’t hang down on the deck. When we turned back into the wind to fix the baggy foot of the sail, Mike released the reef line before taking the sail ties off the excess sail being held down to the boom. This was a big no-no as immediately two large tears opened up in our mainsail.

Mike realized his mistake immediately. He knows better, but mistakes can happen when you’re trying to do a bunch of things at once on a moving, rolling boat. We both screamed out when it happened, a bit in shock. Our sails are only a little over three years old and to rip big tears in them is a bit heartbreaking. Feeling a bit dejected, we put the mainsail back at the second reef point and headed toward Penrhyn.

Now, were were really ready to get there, both of us in a bit of a foul mood about the passage. We headed more up wind to try and get more speed and made it to Penrhyn just before sundown on Thursday. Luckily, after we arrived in Penrhyn, we had numerous friends offer to help us with the repairs. The main halyard was easily rerun through the mast, and we had friends on other boats willing to give us sail cloth to repair the tears in the sail.

Locals in one of the villages gave us a big, covered space we could spread the sail out to repair it. Two of our friends from other boats, Ken and Tuomo had experience repairing sails. Tuomo even worked for a sail maker in Finland. We lugged our sewing machine, sail and generator to shore and four of us worked for several hours to patch and sew the sail. I never thought I’d be sitting on a dirt floor with my sewing machine on the ground, sitting sideways so one foot could work the pedal, and be sewing a giant sail! It took all four of us to work the sail through the machine, but afterwards our sail looked good as new. The patches are hardly noticeable and really strong. Afterward, we all celebrated back on Adagio with a cold beer. Whew! Time to have some fun!

~katie