If you’re not into sailing you can skip all this, the summary is: he got into a mess, made it worse then fixed it but lost something important for sailing. Where to begin? As the sun came up a larger wave pushed on the quarter as the AP was coming up to fetch more wind: CaB went into a broach. The AP recovered after a few too many tries, and when I was on deck Big (our biggest spinnaker) had wrapped his many square meters around the sock dousing lines! That’s preferable to a wrap around the stay, so yeah! I had been discussing letterbox drops with Skip so I proceeded. All went fine and Big went into the cabin, probably to have a chat with the AP. At that point I should have listened to my inner “take it ease” voice, and take a rest. But no, I decided to put up another headsail, our medium size spinnaker. So that went up the mast (with the reef in as it was in) only to find out there was a twist in the sock. So it had to come down again, and the twist sorted out. And that’s when the biggest blunder so far happened: I lost a spinnaker sheet. So much for slip knots at the end. That’s a big bummer. Anyways, back inside the cabin, wrestling with a very large sail, a spaghetti of cloth and sheets, I discovered a few tears in the sail, which I fixed (hopefully good enough), but there may be more. I do have another large spinnaker if necessary. Then I untangled the mess (insert a healthy dose of swearing here) and stuffed Big back into its bag. Next was to snuff it back into its sock, using the genoa halyard. Pfew, all in all, about 4 hours of sweating hard inside a hot cabin! As I write this, I lie in my own poodle of sweat. I do have a mini fan with me so I turned it on, but it died right away so it’s back to charging. I have a backup for it in case it’s dead. Not pleased for not listening to my inner voice and losing a spinnaker sheet. Trying to relax a bit now.
Yikes! Sounds like you are going to sleep well at least! It’s amazing how many things can go wrong with a boat!
Ugh….nasty. At least “B9g” came down! Better the sock lines than the forestay!