Hi Everyone

Sorry the delay in giving our first update. But it’s been an eventful start to the crossing. Definitely hoping for less eventful days ahead. So here goes.

An hour before our departure, the last water taxi dropping a few of our crew drove into our stern and buckled the swim ladder in our stern and ripped the screws out leaving 3 holes in our boat. I was apoplectic as you can imagine and completely ruined my mood even though I knew this would do nothing. After running repairs and epoxying the holes closed we readied to set sail. We had decided our routing would be south of Isabella and then head north over the equator to avoid the doldrums. As we raised the mainsail, I saw in shock that our mainsail had a small hole where some stitching has come undone. I started to wonder whether we should return to anchorage. The omens were starting to stack. But decided onwards we should go. We had good wind on a broad reach but with cross seas, the first evening was exhausting and couldn’t get the boat settled. The sea state was making it very uncomfortable for the boat and one such swell ripped a snap shackle holding our preventer apart. Another breakage. In the morning we decided to head north and lift Maui our parasail. After a few tries, we finally launched the sail. Horror struck when we saw 2 huge tears in the sail. Furious at myself for not double checking this sail before we left. We must have damaged it months ago when we dropped it sailing from the BVI’s. You can’t understand the panic considering this is my key sail to cross the Pacific. Anyway we are expert sail fixers after the Atlantic crossing, so quickly we dropped the parasail and launched our Gennikar and went to work. A few hours later Maui was flying again and a little sun poked through from the incessant cold. I hoped the worst was behind us and soon all would be well. I watched her fly all through the afternoon and into the evening thinking and vowing we must add more strength to the fix in the morning. At around 2am I went to sleep and woke for my shift at 5am and immediately saw the fix had partially broken and immediately we dropped the sail. All hands on deck. Whilst reviewing the problem I realised we needed to sew this fix as tapes will inevitably fail and come off. We have bought a sewing machine but sadly none of us knows how to use it. Silly sausages and probably the only boat in the world carrying a very heavy professional sailrite machine that we can’t use. But luckily for us the wind got really light and the sea was calm so I radioed our buddy boat Dragonfly and took up a previous offer from Amandine to come aboard our boat with her machine to help sew the fix. The tear was 6-7 meters so hand stitching was not possible. But transferring people in the middle of an ocean miles from land can be dangerous and it was not easy. I tasked my very capable 12 year old Arabella to brave the open sea and ferry Amandine over in our tender as I needed to look after our catamaran. Before Arabella got on the dinghy I almost lost the dinghy completely by making a silly mistake when trying to drop her. This for another story but it is safe to say I was over tired and I made a silly mistake. Anyway soon we had Amandine onboard and we got to work trying to fix this sail for the fifth time (3x on the Atlantic) and it’s a huge sail so not easy on a boat. But Amandine did a wonderful job. Dragonfly didn’t even need to slow down or stop. We managed to fetch Amandine and return her without them even dropping their parasail. Things were looking up. I knew this fix was good and stitching is much stronger than tape. Anyway we were back sailing Maui in no time. He (Maui) looks a little like a warrior returning from war with all her patches but he is sailing well as I type. Last night I got a wonderful sleep with my crew being awesome and letting me get some shut eye in my own bed from a crazy first 3 days. I’m having breakfast now and just watched a huge shoal of Dolphins swim past and feeling blessed and rested. Onwards we go.