One more furl of the sail and the furler line would have snapped in half, meaning the sail would have been stuck fully out.  After thousands of nautical miles, some strong weather, and constant wear, the gear on Fenwick Light is showing some wear.  Today, Josh’s daily duty was to walk the decks looking for chaffing and wear on gear (mine was to rotate the eggs, which I would say is equally as important.)  He noticed two points along the line that furls in the headsail were almost completely chaffed through.

Luckily we have all the time in the world out here, so we spent the whole morning and some of the afternoon, hanking on a new sail (so we didn’t lose speed) while fixing the current one, setting up a new line, and realizing the new line needed to be cut down to fit.  Josh and Farrell did the work at the bow as they crashed up and down getting thoroughly soaked.  It was about time they had a shower anyways!  Stay tuned for some pretty awesome footage of that.

Enough excitement for one day (hopefully!) We rewarded ourselves with banana buckwheat pancakes and some serious napping!

Christine’s note:  I met with Ted and Sue tonight, Josh’s family and we studied the position of the ever changing high in hopes of advising the FWL crew of their negotiation around it.  It is a slippery, every changing thing.  The darker blue spots mean no wind – yuck for a sailboat.  The arrows show the direction of the wind which explains why they have done so much northing.  They should be good until next weekend and then may need to motor for a stretch.   I was excited to see their hint of easting today – east is home!  Go team Fenwick Light.

Distance in 24 hours:  128 nm – a record breaker!