SO. There we were. Rolling along at a comfortable clip, Capt. K waxing lyrical (again….) about cutter rigs in general, and Ressie’s gorgeous gennie in particular. Blah, blah, blah.. Its getting fresh. Time to reef then. A simple matter of pressing that magical power-winch button as we ease the sheet. Grind, grind. Its a bit stiff. Bloody hell. Its stopped turning. Holly @#$%! The genoa fell gracefully from the mast, as if choreographed, managing to land just alongside the boat, about 80% furled. Now what? Well, lets strap it down I guess, then pop inside the wheelhouse for a short prayer ceremony…. Crap.
GENOA FURLED GURU STYLE. Less windage, see…
“Classic halyard wrap on dyform wire” says Warren, resident rigger, cheerfully. Talk about a trap for young players. It turns out the halyard has been catching on the top of the foil. It strangled the top of the foil (which is now crushed), and then eventually the halyard forced the forestay to be twisted with the full force of the power winch. Eventually it failed at the end of the terminal swage. It has probably been going on for months…
CLASSIC HALYARD WRAP, APPARENTLY
Fortunately, the main load bearing forestay is the one on the staysail – 12 mm and super strong. So, the mast is not about to fall down. As an example of ‘what can go wrong, will go wrong’, though, it will take some beating.
We’ve found the ‘best rigger in South Africa’ (that will be cheerful Warren), who happens to know Resolute from when she was built, and probably rigged her originally. So we’ll get a brand new forestay and trick foil in Cape Town, plus a full rig assessment. We’re not alone, either. Two other ARC boats have rig issues after the same crossing, so the ARC fleet is a dream come true for the local guys!
As for going up the mast at sea? Bad idea. Nuh. Don’t really recommend that at all. The view, however…..
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