Day 3.
Our just saved, good old gennaker is so weak that we have to drop it in every few hours to repair the small holes appearing in the sailcloth again and agin. Fortunately my daughter brought us the very old spinnaker I had at home. It was the orginal spinnaker of Amadeus, arrived with boat. It is cc. 25 years old, and has never been used by us and rarely by the original owner. The only information I got from the orginal owner is that it is huge and needs big trained crew.
The spinnaker boom was cut into two pieces once for some reason. I spliced the aluminium tube just before the ARC to have something on the boat to make jury rig if necessary. But I bought brand new end fittings, just in case... And finally we have a spinneker and also have spinnaker boom on deck. Why not try them?
After meticoulus preparation we hoisted the spi. Quite good, looks nice, and is definitely not small .-)
Why not leave it on for the night too? The wind stable 10-15 knots, no storm around, what could go wrong?
Well...
The factory fitted dyneema loop of the brand new end fitting failed. Not the dyneema itself, but the knot. Nice work :( Baang! The downhaul came of, the boom and the sail skyrocketed and we had a huge spinnaker flying at mast top level. We had a funny evening program but finally it is safe on deck.
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