Risque Business - Lunch Rudely Interupted

So, there we were enjoying lunch with leftovers from the recent chilli and fish suppers when our beautiful blue and white gennaker gracefully fell into the water on our port side. It was greeted with a multitude of “OH *****” from the crew, who were starting to choke on their mouthful of grub!

All action to recover the waterlogged sail from the briney, and luckily we managed to retrieve it without any damage. After only 4 or 5 hours of flying the sail, it had chaffed straight through a 14mm halyard - some going! Said halyard was left inside the mast near the keel.

With no halyard available, there was only one thing for it - “Ed, you fancy going aloft?”.

“You what…… it’s a very rolly sea and the mast whanging around like a bucking bronco with a red hot poker up it’s backside - gotta be joking”.

“Sorry, little option, we’ve got to rig a new halyard if we want to fly the gennaker again”

“Oh, OK then, if their really is no option”

So a plan was devised by the engineering team and with the usual RB chaos, up went Ed and dropped the mousing line down the inside of the mast which was found by Nick at the base, a new halyard was attached and Ed pulled the new rope up, fitted an additional block to the chaffe point (and turned the tricolour masthead navigation light so it faced the right way). Worked a treat and within 90 mins, we had the gennaker back up again and back up to speed. Ed returned to earth a little bruised and battered from his 25m high mid-Atlantic exploit, but all's well again on the good ship RB and cold beers flowing again. Good work, team RB!