Theia of London - Day 11| A homage to Laurie Smith

 

 

 

All of a sudden, the boat jerked violently. Both Iain and Ben, now struggling to stand on the foredeck, were ankle deep in sea water. Theia was suddenly lying on her side, her top rails below the water, her forward drive stopped abruptly and now she was about to violently round up into the wind while Prince, our hitherto dependable, elegant spinnaker kite, flailed madly in the darkened squally sky.  We had just 'broached'.

 

"Broaching" a sailing yacht is a bit like using poor humour with your mother-in-law - rarely leads to a positive outcome and entirely avoidable had you been able to switch off your man-brain for a split second.

 

Here is the story...

 

As you may recall yesterday morning we decided to launch our beautiful purple spinnaker "Prince", after a tough night at sea and fairly poor progress.  Initially this proved to be a wise decision and we congratulated ourselves on being masters of the universe once again.

 

...and then the squall arrived. 

 

The golden rule with squalls in tropical climates is react quickly and shorten sail in preparation for a brief, but rapid deterioration in weather conditions.  If you have a spinnaker up, get it down immediately.  So, what do we do - engage man-brains and carry on (its not that bad, we'll be fine...).  As Theia surfed in the rapidly increasing wind strength, a wave picked up the leeward quarter (the downwind back corner of the boat) and put us into an uncontrollable spin. 

 

Iain's face whitened as we rounded up and he and Ben found themselves standing on the foredeck with their feet under water.  Having just spent the past 10 days adjusting to life aboard at a 45 degree angle, he was instantly confused to find himself standing upright again as the boat rolled over underneath his feet.  The call was made for Prince to be hauled down as quickly as possible.  Alas, the pressure was too much and Prince tore in two from top to bottom.  There was a muffled whimper from Mark as he saw his beloved spinnaker formerly known as Prince now turned into two little Princelings and an expensive repair bill looming.  The wet, rugged work left Ben and Iain's hands blooded and blistered. Not ideal.

 

Clearly unhappy with our offering at halfway, Neptune then brought more drama this morning when Minkey hailed "ALL HANDS ON DECK". Everyone came rushing out of their bunks and up on to deck ,just in time to see the stay sail (one of the two head sails we had flying at the time )fall into the Atlantic ocean. Mark, Mike, Ben and Iain rushed to the foredeck to retrieve the sail that was now trawling for our catch of the day. Hauled on board and after a quick assessment, we realised that the shackle the held the stay sail to the top of the mast had failed, causing the sail to drop. The only way were were going to fix this was by sending someone up the mast with a replacement. Being a former tree surgeon, Minkey (much to his disappointment) was the perfect candidate. We hauled the stay sail up on a temporary halyard, Minkey strapped himself into the climbing harness and in what was a very lumpy sea, he proceeded to climb the mast. As he climbed, we were joined by a playful pilot whale, who surfed alongside us and periodically dived under Theia. From the deck, the whale show was impressive, but from 29 meters above the water, Minkey tells us that it was truly amazing. Unfortunately, the movement aloft was so violent, that Minkey was unable to retrieve his camera out of his climbing pouch in fear of 1) loosing grip of the mast, 2) throwing up all over the deck as his attention diverted to taking an Instagram-worthy shot.

 

After 20mins of hard work, our new hero, Minkey had replaced the shackle and was descending back down to the closest thing was have to terra firma.  His efforts were rewarded with the last of the Haribo, the arrival of a stunningly vivid double rainbow and exclusion from watch duties for the rest of the day. Iain has resorted back to wearing a tea-towel on his head.