I'm a Loser, Baby

09/09/02

    The wind and waves went down gradually yesterday, and before dinner we shook the third reef out of the main.  At 0200, Eric woke me up to say that the wind had died, and we were taking advantage of the situation to take off the damaged jib. 

    I put on my gear and went on deck.  I was controlling the reel winch for the jib halyard, and had released the brake so David could bring down  the jib.  David was unable to get the jib out of the trace because the feeder, a steel piece that fits into the track to facilitate feeding the sail luff into the groove, was preventing the luff from coming out.  I went forward to  help him take off the feeder, which was a little tricky.  I neglected to tighten the brake on the winch before I went forward, and as a result, when we were occupied lowering the sail, the halyard unwound from the winch and fouled on the spreader, and we were later to find out, fouled on the top of the headstay too. 

    After taking down the jib, which was torn right down the middle, rolling it up like a sausage, and lashing it to the lifelines, we decided to turn on the engine, go to sleep, and continue in the morning to raise the yankee jib in the place of the torn genoa. 

    The next morning I was able to unfoul the halyard from the spreader with little problem, and I thought it was a happy ending for my fuck-up.  However, when we were attaching the sail to the furler, Eric noticed that the halyard at the top of the headstay was not quite running right, it was twisted on something.  We made many attempts to free it from below by looping the halyard around and shaking it about, all to no avail.  Eric had some very harsh words with me about the fact that I had been on the boat for three months and was still making fundamental mistakes.  This is not the first time I have screwed up with the winch brake.  I don’t know what I can do to insure that I won’t do it again.  I don’t feel like I can trust myself.  David volunteered to go up the mast to fix the halyard.  He went up in the bosun’s chair, wearing the bicycle helmet, and was able to fix it in short order.  I feel very low at this point, knowing that Eric has expressed in no uncertain terms his lack of confidence in me.  I can’t possibly have confidence in myself at this point, and I need to do something to remedy this. 

    We are still motoring at this point, looking for wind.  At least it is a beautiful, warm day and we are being followed by four big albatrosses.