Sunday 8th January 2017
We had been making it our mission to not broach the boat on our trip to Rio as it inevitably causes some damage in addition to chaos for the few minutes that the vessel is lying on its side, un-steerable with everyone hanging on for dear life. This normally happens when one gets overpowered with the spinnaker up and we had been drilling it into the crew that there always had to be someone at the ready on the guy line through the end of the spinnaker pole onto the sail’s clew so that they could “smoke” it at a moment’s notice to depower it should we get overpowered. The next thing would be to release the spinnaker sheet to ensure that the spinnaker could flutter freely with nothing restraining it on the boat other than the halyard at the top of the mast which would be the very last line to release if all else failed. All good in theory of course and there needed to be lots of reminders for the watch person not helming to take their guy duty seriously. And then we broached. It was just before 2:00 am, a pitch black night and the helmsman didn’t notice a squall creeping up on the boat from behind and his watch partner had disappeared down below to wake up the next watch person s it was time for “their turn” on watch, leaving the guy unattended. By the time the skipper who had just poked his head out of the stern hatch to call for the guy to be smoked when sensing the situation was getting out of control there was no-one to do it. The boat pitched her bow into the ocean while kicking her stern up into the air as she twisted out of control. The boom swung over instantly and snatching at the gybe preventer pulled it free of the small car cleat that it had been secured in and which was not intended for this purpose. We always used old lines for the gybe preventer so that they could break in such a situation but it should have been secured to a sturdy mooring deck cleat so that it could break rather than damage a fitting. The guy was eventually released by the watch partner hurriedly returning to his post but in the frantic effort to let it go it became jammed and didn’t release fully. Then the spinnaker sheet also became jammed with the result that the big purple spinnaker now billowed above the boat which still lay on her side and only when the skipper dumped the halyard did the spinnaker finally drop onto the sea behind the boat which then righted herself. Very fortunately the portholes in the saloon were all tightly shut and no water was taken aboard during the broach which sent a wave of water into the cockpit area. Although numerous requests had been made to keep all the portholes closed while flying the spinnakers the heads ones were wide open but as they were on the opposite side to the broach there was thankfully no water that came through them. Once we had retrieved the spinnaker from the sea we then tried to pull in the gybe preventer line that had somehow managed to get washed overboard in the chaos, taking with it one of our bow Cape 2 Rio decals. The line wouldn’t release and checking it wasn’t fouling the rudder and the steering we then suspected it must have managed to wrap around the prop. This was confirmed by the strange vibration set up by the prop when we went any faster than 5 knots and we would need to leave it until the morning when we donned some goggles and dived under the boat to untangle the line from the prop shaft.
All that we seemed to lose from the broach was a corner cushion and the top section of the hotbox cooker that we had also enjoyed using as a backrest. We had inadvertently donated these to the ocean to join the other flotsam at sea. The big purple spinnaker didn’t survive the ordeal though and she split right down the centre yet again from head to foot and then across her midriff, the fabric having shredded in a tangle of threads. Even the clew board had become detached from the sail as the material seemed to perished to take the load. This same spinnaker has experienced a couple of other similar broaches previously a couple of years before with a fraction of this damage. It was obvious that the spinnaker was kaput and unlikely ever to be of any use again.
The next day was spent in a sombre mood by all on board as we sailed on in good winds with only the genoa out on the spinnaker pole, most of the crew too fearful of flying the spinnaker again lest we have a repeat of what happened in the small hours earlier that day. What the experience did do is have the crew fully understand how important instructions like being ready to smoke the guy and keeping the portholes closed actually were and that the boat was sailed first with no place for clock watching when there were tasks to be done. Everyone took their watch duties when managing the sails far more seriously. In the afternoon we set to the task of trying to repair the damaged spinnaker. Five hours later we were less than half way through the repairs and running out of stickyback sail repair material. We were also using duct tape and Pratleys epoxy to try and complete the job but even these were running out. We also made the mistake of gluing the clew board onto the sail with a 1800 twist in it which took us ages to figure out why the luff and leach tapes ran straight but the foot was always twisted like a Taurus ring. So we had to pull this section apart and start again, quickly coming to the realization that we were fighting a losing battle trying to resurrect this old sail and deciding to shelve any further repairs so that we could save any stickyback left over for fixing the spare white spinnaker if it ever needed it. We would have to be extremely careful to look after the white spinnaker really well over the remaining part of the trip.