Day 23 (Saturday, July 5, 2008) by Mike

Sailing with Dummies (Hawaii to Alaska Edition)

This morning we started motoring into a light headwind. Around 6:30a (Alaska time?) the wind shifted and strengthened so I turned off the motor and we started sailing. Around 8:30a the front sail started flapping too much.

One of the cables that holds the front of our bowsprit (jousting pole) in place was flopping around loose. I turned away from the wind and took as much pressure off the sail as possible, since it was really stressing some things on the front of the boat. It turned out that the metal connector (pad-eye) that holds the end of the cable had broken.

I proceeded to wake Bob up and invited him to join me in taking down the gennaker (big front sail). He did and we did. After it was down, we shored up the front end with ropes and went back inside (it’s COLD outside) and discussed our options.

Our first thoughts were that it would be weeks to get a replacement pad-eye. Another complication was that the nuts on the back of the four pad-eye bolts are located inside a watertight, sealed safety-compartment. If we needed to get to the nuts it would require cutting an access hole in the watertight compartment to get to it.

After warming up some, and exploring our options, we discovered that we had an extra pad-eye on the back of the boat that was not being used. We explored some options and decided to have at it, since the waves were small. We removed the rear pad-eye and gathered tools. I went forward in the dinghy, and Bob descended into our front hold. We rousted Melinda and Josh for the fun and around five hours later it was fixed. Good as new.

After all that, the wind had died again and we motored on.

Temperature report:

Bedroom: 53 degrees

Upstairs: 61 degrees

Outside: 49 degrees

Daily Cuisine:

Bacon, eggs, oatmeal for breakfast. A chicken and veggie dish (thanks Melinda) to warm up after the repairs. Junk food after that.

Fishing Report:

No bites, no action. But to be fair, the poles weren’t in the water very long.

Arts and Entertainment:

More piano playing and a few movies.