More Things Breaking

08/23/02

We are continuing with the same fucking conditions.  Through the night the wind would blow 20 knots, drop to 10 for a few minutes, then go up to 25-30, then down to a steady 20 again.

We turned the clocks forward an hour to GMT yesterday, because it was getting dark too early.  The problem is that we are really 2 hours behind GMT, so the sun may not set until 2000, but now it doesn’t rise until 0800.  It is our own twisted daylight savings time, and since we are in the middle of the ocean, we can keep whatever freakin’ time we want.

We had a nice full moon showing last night, which really brightens things up.  I saw a very unusual falling star.  It looked like it was very close, like fireworks or a flare going off, and fell very slowly and brightly.

When I woke up this morning for my 0800 watch (in pitch darkness), I heard a new banging noise on the port side.  When I got up, Eric informed me about what it was and what we would have to do about it.  The halyard that holds the radar reflector was wrapped around a shroud, banging against another shroud as the boat heaved in the waves.  What we would need to do is drop the sails and head downwind while Eric goes up the mast and reeves a new halyard.  David and I got up, put on our foul weather gear, and went on deck.  Eric had on his long pants and padded jacket in preparation for going aloft.  He also had a bicycle helmet he was going to wear.

After we dropped the mainsail and were headed into the wind, we saw that the radar reflector was starting to unwrap itself from the shrouds.  After allowing it to unwrap completely, we were able to get it lowered properly, and saw that it was not the halyard that was broken, it was the wire pendant that attached the bottom of the radar reflector to the halyard that was broken.  We tied off the halyard, disconnected the radar reflector, and stowed it down below.  We had thus avoided the necessity for Eric to go up the mast.