Journal, Tuesday 11/25

“Hounds kite up most of the day, wind is up and down. Finally, in the late afternoon the wind is up, and we wipe out with a long broach. The spinnaker flogs so violently that it flicks the clew like the end of a cracking whip, punching a good size hole near that corner with its own sheet snap shackles. We struggle to get the sleeve down over the sail and then lower the whole sail only to find that the hounds spinnaker halyard has chafed entirely through its cover. [Most of the lines on Anthem are double braid construction, where the outer braid - the cover - is polyester and the in braid – the core – is made from a light weight, low stretch super fiber or combination of fibers like Kevlar, Spectra, or Vectran.] This is very worrisome as we expect to have to use this halyard a lot of the time between here and St Lucia – and after 18 hours of use it is half gone.

“We unfurl the jib and rig it poled out, running dead down wind toward a waypoint south of the rhumb line. This is a spot in the ocean we have been routed toward by Commander’s as the spot to be to line up for the best breeze in the next few days. The spinnaker is quickly repaired and a new halyard reeved, but we decide, in the interest of preserving equipment and crew, to keep the poled out jib rigged during the night. We are making pretty good VMG downwind – close enough to our polars [theoretical predictions of Anthem’s optimum performance at various wind angles and strengths] that we don’t feel that we’re losing much ground under this rig.

Anthem with poled out jib

“The night is mostly overcast giving few visual cues to steer by, and the acceptable wind angle with the poled out jib is small, so steering is very difficult. At Tom’s suggestion we start a system where a watch-mate ‘coaches’ the helmsman by reading the instruments to him, especially true wind direction and heading, while the helmsman concentrates on whatever visual clues he can find to keep the boat on course. This proves a big help and our steering improves dramatically. Dr. John, our medical officer and the unofficial ‘old man’ of the crew turns out to excel at this kind of steering.”