They say there are only two certain things in life - death and taxes, but since passing through the Raz du Sein, towards the end of July, the North Atlantic has consistently given us two things. We have enjoyed a world of blue skies and azure blue water with varying degrees of white caps (apart from just one morning of fog in Galicia). Today however, at sunrise, there is some cloud, and with the higher winds of yesterday afternoon, that have more or less continued overnight, I was wondering what was in store for us.
At 0900 I woke David to take over the boat and I took over the pilot berth for my third, consecutive, deep off watch 2.5 hour sleep. I was woken at midday to - “the wind has dropped to 15 knots we can get the ballooner up, come on, get up and dressed”. It was blowing 17 knots when I got into the cockpit, but all certainly felt a lot gentler than yesterday. We had both been thinking carefully about ballooner hoisting procedures, after yesterday, and took the paranoid approach.
We put the engine into tick over for back up (and also to charge the batteries); we gybed the genoa onto port; we re-rigged the starboard pole for the ballooner; we manoeuvred the forestay foil so that the starboard ballooner luff track was facing backwards into the inside face of the genoa; and we luffed up to 130 degrees apparent. With me at the mast hoisting, and David on the foredeck feeding the sail into the track, off we went again. The sail made a few bids for freedom in flying forwards, and once got outside the genoa, but David managed to tame it each time and we continued as quickly as we could. The problem is that the ballooner is a twin headsail, of lighter weight material (but heavier than a spinnaker), cut to more or less the same shape as the genoa. So it has a high aspect and until a reasonable amount is up there is not enough mass in the sail to get it to go where you want it to. But, all of a sudden we had enough up, and the sail dutifully popped itself backwards down the inside of the genoa. Great. We could continue the hoist fully in control. We did just that and then David tied off the tack line whilst I secured the sail in the special AMEL mast head fitting and removed the halyard. Then both back to the cockpit; engine off ( batteries up to 97%); forestay foil straightened; bear away dead downwind; pull through the ballooner to the end of the pole using the ewincher. The twin headsails started pulling and we were, almost exactly two days after the start, at last sailing properly downwind with our intended sail plan. A sigh of relief all round.
Over the afternoon and wind continued to drop and the seas to moderate. By mid afternoon conditions were absolutely perfect. David just loves this sail plan and we think she is sailing beautifully. The auto pilot hardly moves the boat is so well balanced, and she is far more comfortable than under the white sails, as well as considerably faster. Proper downwind trade wind sailing. This is what Frances Louise was built to do and what, this year, we are coming to adore. When the true wind is less than ten knots she sails as fast as the apparent wind. We are comparatively slower though when the true wind gets above ten. When Henri Amel designed this rig 40(?) ish years ago Sir Ben was not around to explain how to go faster than the apparent wind!
As the day wore on the wind came back. Darkness was approaching. We are not too comfortable pushing her continuously above seven knots through the water and we are not in a hurry. So we put two furls in the twin headsails as a cautious approach for overnight, there just been the two of us on board.
At 2315 I was in bed and David was on watch. The boat rolled to starboard on a rogue wave. The binoculars fell out of their holder, their strap catching behind the gear lever, which arrested their fall as they descended between the back of the wheel and the bulkhead, and got trapped. The autopilot tried to turn the wheel. It was jammed in the binocs and the autopilot cut out. The boat continued the turn the autopilot had started as the wheel was jammed. She luffed right up and the sails started to back wind. David was able to reverse the helm and pull out the binoculars, but the auto pilot would not come back on. This is our new second auto pilot fitted this winter for this trip. However the old one, which still works perfectly well and is our back up, was not switched on, and he needed to go down below for that, which he could not do as he was now left on his own hand steering. This continued for forty minutes. It took David a short while to get into the swing of steering the boat on course and downwind through the darkness, waves.and slightly shifting wind, but he said he enjoyed doing so once he got going.
At midnight, instead of the customary gentle wake-up I usually get, I got called from the cockpit - “ time to get up and dressed and I need you out here as soon as possible”. I took over the helm. In IT Consultant mode David had decided a reboot would hopefully sort things out. He went down below and switched on the old auto pilot. We set the boat up on that independent system. Then he switched off all of the B&G instruments, and then put them back on again. The MFD we use as a chart plotter immediately sprang into life and I reset it for our passage. The other MFD we use for wind data likewise came back on. But the auto pilot screen just had a series of dashes. Then it too sprung into life, and worked when we switched back over to it. We were up and running again. Phew. David collapsed into bed at 0040.
The rest of the night was fine. Wind on the light side for the reefed sail plan, but we were very safe, as desired. Frances Louise surged on over the moonlit sea, we alternated sleeping and helming, and all was well again. It had been quite a day!