Decapitated

Time: 2021/07/20 03:30:49
Latitude: 48-51.54N
Longitude: 162-55.20W
Speed: 3.6
Course: 27T
Wind_Speed: 11
Wind_Dir: SSW
Barometer: 1030
Air_Temp: 12C
Wave_Dir: SSW
Comment: This is the passage that never ends. Crew morale is suffering somewhat due to cold and light winds impeding progress. I hate to wish for more wind as inevitably that comes back to bite you, but we don't sail well in less than 10kt apparent and dead downwind can be a challenge...


Sailing dead downwind should be a breeze for us as long as the winds are light. We have this awesome spinnaker for just that purpose. The whole point of a spinnaker is they fly with wind filling them from downwind and we enjoy a lovely, blissful slide down one wave after the other. It honestly at times feels like we are not even moving, the movement is so gentle and yet the boat can be going 5 or 6 knots without seeming any effort. The winds since yesterday have been perfect for the spinnaker and so we were happy to oblige and take full advantage. But sometimes $hit happens!

There are occasional times when our trusty autopilot likes to take a break without any warning. No beep to let us know it is deciding to turn itself off. Just the next thing you know Maple is veering very much off course. Now on the rare times this has happened before, we have the usual jib and main sails up so when the autopilot turns itself off, the boat starts turning upwind, the sails start luffing, which is when we notice and jump to action to steer ourselves back on course, reset the autopilot, no harm done. Well in the spirit of celebrating...hmmm, in this case, let's say acknowledging...all the "milestones" and "countless firsts" for us on Maple, this morning we had the unpleasant experience of the first time the autopilot deciding to take that break when the spinnaker was flying. Spinnakers are not meant to have wind coming from too far upwind as it causes them to swiftly move to the beam and start to thrash itself into oblivion. Best case, we can quickly steer ourselves back on course and the sail refills and life is good again. Worst case, rigging can break. In our case, the rigging held up just fine so we will call that a win. But our spinnaker paid the price for our autopilot's inconvenient timing for a rest. The head (top) of the sail tore completely off and subsequently the vast majority of the sail swiftly fell into the water. We were able to recover the sail, no problem, but that was the end to our blissful downwind sailing.

Well that is how I started my day!!! So here we are down a lightwind sail and still very much in lightwinds. We spent the day slowly sailing with the jib and main wing on wing, not nearly as efficient as the spinnaker but we were making some progress. But honestly as the day progressed and the boat speed continued to slide, morale for D and I were depleting quickly. The clouds have been oppressively thick today without any sunshine coming in so it never really warmed up inside. The batteries decided to give us more trouble again. To put it simply, we are not loving this sailing thing at the moment. This evening at dinner, we discussed with the girls how we are feeling and they are such amazing kids telling us all kinds of things we could do to cheer ourselves up. It was very much an unusual role reversal for our family. In the end, Iris resorted to quoting one of her favourite shows, "Parks & Recreation", when the character, Anne, didn't want solutions to her complaints, just validation, and with perfect comedic timing, Iris patted D on the shoulder and said "That sucks".