Day 5 to Minerva Reef (Repost)

Today we are about 1,000km from NZ. The wind has dropped out altogether and virtually no swell. The ocean had that oily sheen you get on very still days, plus we had almost total very high cloud cover which filtered the light adding to the eerie atmosphere. A prefect day to repair the spinnaker sock.

For the non-sailors, the spinnaker is a large sail, usually colourful, that is flown from the front of the boat when going downwind. It is not a sail that is permanently fixed in place like the other sails on the boat but is hoisted up the mast when being used. Being such a large sail it is difficult to manage while getting setup so it is contained in a sock while it is raised and lowered. The sock has rigid hoops top and bottom joined by a tube of light weight material. The sail is attached to the top hoop with points for hoisting the sail and the bottom hoop is also connected to the top by a system of ropes to slide the sock up and down over the sail. Once the sail is raised up the mast the bottom hoop is pulled up allowing the sail to open and be filled by the wind. To get the sail down pressure is released from the sail by easing the ropes the control the sail and the sock is pulled down over the sail so the sail can be lowered. Sounds like a simple process but Ann & I often struggle with it and can end up in a terrible mess when things don't go just right.

The damage to the spinnaker sock was in the bottom hoop. The hoop is made out of 3mm nylon board bent into a hoop with the ends joined and held together by a patch of 3mm board hand stitched on to both ends. The patch board is about 100 x 150mm and has split so the hoop has opened at the bottom but still joined at the top of the hoop and the join is now a V and catching the sail preventing the sock from coming all the way down.

The repair wasn't high tech but was effective. I removed the old patch board and use it as a template to cut and drill a new one out of an old flexible chopping board then hand stitched it in place.

Given there was no wind it was a prefect time to raise the spinnaker to test the repairs and to check we hadn't torn the sail when we were trying to lower it on Monday. So we stopped the engine and got the sail up while just drifting. Good result all round, the sail wasn't damaged and the repairs worked fine.

Footnote: We hadn't seen another boat all day and as we were getting the spinnaker down we see a yacht coming up behind us. Don't know what they would have thought seeing the spinnaker up in no wind. I know what I'd think ;-)