Know that there will be challenges
Even when you are aligned, challenges are part of the game. And learning how to navigate them, part of the lesson.
Day 49: 658 nautical miles to Barbados. The last couple of days have presented challenges and opportunities for growth. The wind has picked up, abruptly ending the regimen of daily routines that I had established. Yesterday was dramatic. Strong, stable winds gave way to gusts of gale and storm clouds catching up with Falkor. The freshwater showers were nice, and so were the vast rainbows that crossed the skies. The strong gusts of wind, not so much.
For a long time, I ignored the sailor’s maxim, ‘when you think it’s time to reef the sail, the moment has already passed, and Poseidon wasn’t going to let us off the hook. As we reached maximum speeds of 9 knots, the upper limit for a boat our size, I decided that we should have reefed the sail several knots of wind ago. Usually, reefing the Genoa is a walk in the park, even with strong winds.
Not this time. The Furlex, which is the thingy at the bottom of the front stay that we use to roll up the Genoa, failed us at the worst possible moment, and made it impossible for us to take the sail in. We had faced the wind to take power off the sail, but this caused the sail to flap intensely and equivalent to the amount of wind (which was very strong). The flapping caused the big and heavy spinnaker boom to slam into the boat railings again and again.
What should normally be an easy manoeuvre was suddenly a risky bet to save the spinnaker boom and railings from getting completely crushed, and the sail from getting shredded. For a second, I felt overwhelmed. But, to my satisfaction, I kept my cool, strapped onto the safety line, and quickly moved to the front of the boat, where I took down and secured the three-meter-long aluminum boom (which could easily crack my skull open if I was not careful).
Next, we took the sail down and got it under deck. David, a French hitchhiker that we picked up in Mindelo, helped me pull the Genoa through the front hatch and onto my bed, which was soaked with saltwater by the waves that crashed across the deck. Meanwhile, Jorge and Lucho kept Falkor steady at the rudder. Again, the universe conspired in our favour, and while Lucho pinched his finger and the boat sustained some injury, we managed to get back on course with no critical harm to crew or boat, not minor considering that we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
I had to catch my breath, and it took me an hour or two before my adrenaline levels were back to normal, or perhaps a little below, cause I was beat. We reasoned that we had not only been lucky but also up to the challenge, and that the lesson was a gift that would prove a valuable experience for the future.
