I forgot to mention Chucks birthday yesterday! We had had birthday cupcakes! So we continued through the night In generally an easterly direction under main, staysail and genoa. At 6 am my sister was sleeping in the bow V-birth when she was awoken by a horrible noise. She said it sounded like we were dropping the anchor or something. She came running, something is going on up on the bow. Turning on the spreader light reveal the bow sprit going up and down. I wasn’t sure that the pressure from the roller furled itself wasn’t going to finish the job, but we had to try. Fortunately the genoa came in and rolled up.
We were still moving through the water at a good clip so next we rolled up the staysail and lowered the main. Now we were laying a hull but rolling violently in 10ft swells. So I put up the mizzen and hove to. This greatly reduce the motion. We could see the dolphin striker or bob stay hanging straight down. Mine is a solid stainless bar. We were trying to fish a line behind it so we use it to pick it back up. That proved to challenging in these seas but we finally got it. When we picked it up it was obvious what had failed. The ears that pin to the bow sprit broke off. There had obviously been a stress crack and it was just a matter of time.
We shackled the anchor chain just below the broken fitting and then tightened up with the windlass. The bow sprit is still moving slightly but it is stabilize for the time being. Looking at our position we are just about in the middle of the trip. In fact Bermuda would be the closest port. Accessing our rig I believe we can use a double reef main, the mizzen and the staysail, and of course our engine. We are about to get into the trades and wind and sea should subside some, so I decided to press on. We got an email from Avanti that they were heading to Bermuda for a rudder stuffing box issue, and were we doing the same as they had noticed we appeared to be heading that way. No, our butter hasn’t melted yet, but we will be starting south now. Trying to keep the strain on the rig to a minimum we will mostly power sail from here. By midnight we are just about to cross south of 30N and close to 66W.