After over 35 hours of sailing (and motoring) 220 nautical miles from Ft. Pierce we are here at Cumberland Island, GA. Just before the sun set Sunday night we noticed squalls on the horizon as the wind started to pick up into the high teens. We decided to put a reef in the main. The port side lazy jack lines let loose just as George started to lower the main sail. We were on a starboard tack so the port side lines were taking all of the pressure of the main sail. George tied up the loose lines so they wouldn't foul the propeller and we carried on. Without one side of the lazy jack lines we weren't able to reef the main at all. So, we furled the jib until the wind calmed down. Even with the lighter winds we were still overpowered at times with both jib and main. When we tried furling the jib our speed really dropped.
The route we were following from FastSeas said we would be traveling over 9 knots while in the Gulf Stream. That never happened so we were probably not far enough into the Gulf Stream. We didn't want to go any further east, though. Since we were falling behind our schedule we did a lot of motor sailing to keep up our speed. We didn't want to spend two nights at sea.
We revised our watch schedule to two hours during the day and four hours at night. We each got more sleep at night and napped during the day when we were off watch.
George did a great job of tying up the front and back of the stack pack so it could hold the main sail and keep it from flopping down on the deck when he dropped the sail. Now he is working on fixing the lazy jack lines. One of the two plastic rings on the port side broke. He made two (one primary and one backup) rings out of spectra line and they will substitute for the broken ring. I am thinking that replacing them ought to go on the annual maintenance schedule. Once the job is done we will go explore Cumberland Island. 
Comments
Post a Comment