Yesterday we spent a good amount of time trying to remove some twists and turns that developed between the spinnaker and the sock. We had to bring the spinnaker inside the cabin so that Karine and I could remove the sock and clean the situation.
Today we decided to put the spinnaker up early because the day before, we always felt that a squall was coming and never managed to do it. Our untwisting was not perfect because we could only get 99% of the spinnaker out but that was close enough. We had a nice run for a few hours and avoided squalls that were passing us left and right. Then we got a hit! The rain started to fall, and the wind started to build up. One big wind gust pushed the boat on its side (too bad the window in the guest bathroom was not closed because we now have to deal with wet toilet paper), so we decided to bring the sock down. We woke up Karine who was in her cabin and her and I went to the bow to work on it. Easier said than done… Marc was taking care of the lines in the cockpit. At some point a large wave projected me on the lifelines. I am not sure if I stayed on the boat thanks to the lifelines or my tether line, but whatever it was, it worked. The only damage is a bruised knee.
Obviously, as soon as we were done, the sky turned blue, and the squall was gone. We considered putting the spinnaker back but were too exhausted. A little bit later, Karine proposed to go back to our wing-on-wing configuration. That was a good idea. We first tried without the spinnaker pole, but it did not work well so we resurrected the pole. We have lost our topping lift but since we are not using the spinnaker, we used the spinnaker halyard. We double checked everything many times and we were very careful. The pole is heavy and can easily knock down some one. We found a few places where the lines were crossing each other the wrong way. We then hoisted the pole, and we are now sailing directly towards the finish line instead of having to jibe back and forth.
Right now, Andrea is preparing half the mahi mahi that we did not eat yesterday. She is making delicious tacos. Andrea also too a nice video of the moment we landed the fish yesterday.