August 25, Saturday morning we left for Suvarov/Surrarow a 5 or 6 day sail away and out of French Polynesia beating by 2 days the deadline imposed by our 90 day visa. We headed NW in a brisk wind going at times 8 knots. We were running dead downwind with the whisker pole out so that we were sailing wing and wing. Barry, being a good physicist, kept stating things like, "I don't like the compression loads on the pole" and "There is far too much load on the whisker pole" and pow! And, "Oh, no!!" and the pole bent in half. Of course, this sent the genoa into a wild rage flogging and beating itself to death. I was praying that the pole would not completely break in half with 2 jagged pieces to smash into Barry. Yes, he went into the maelstrom to subdue the whisker pole and sail. Together we got things under control with Barry directing and me following his shouted instructions. The noise of the flogging genoa, the banging pole, the roaring (30 k) wind and the crashing sea made it hard to communicate but we did it! After an hour and a half Barry had the pole secure and safe and the genoa on the opposite side where it belonged.
When Barry finally got to bed a tube of handcream fell onto a tender part of his naked body. That was the end of a very bad day that could have been far far worse.
Actually, this very bad day came a day and a half after another bad day which could have been far worse. The lifting bridle on his outboard motor broke and the outboard went into the ocean and was only prevented from sinking to the bottom by a safety wire. Together we managed to get it back aboard but by then it was full of salt water. Barry spent about 3 hours purging it, getting it started and essentially saving its life. It did live! So there you have it, again, the good and the bad of it.
Now Barry is sleeping, though wounded, and my job is to stay awake, keep a good watch and make sure we don't run into Motu One (oh nay). It is just N of Manuae where the people in the book "Black Wave" ran into a reef and nearly perished. (You should read it!) We have red danger circles around both atolls and all sorts of precautions to keep us out of harm's way, night and day. (I, Sheryl, listened to the audio book and loved it!)
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Nothing like High Seas Drama! Hang in there guys! You are in good company--stuff happens out there and you are dealing with things very well. To me the most terrifying time of our trip was when our boom snapped in half during a squall in the Indian Ocean (even scarier than the tsunami in Thailand). We had a preventer tied and the squall backwinded it. Our boom is 14 feet long, so the broken piece that dragged back and forth across the deck was about 8 ft. The noise it made terrified me. Of course, it was my watch and dark. Gene had to get up and was out in his underwear, trying to lash the end down in the dark.
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Sue and Gene
Sue and Gene