Hawkeye yelled from the helm "It's ripped, it's ripped!". I came up from the cabin into the bright sun and swell, and saw the headsail shredded after a week of close-hauled, hard sailing.
On the morning of our departure from Sydney, I'd deliberated on whether to bring a backup. I don't really like thinking what the rest of the journey would have been like if we left with no spare, and kick myself now for being so close to that misjudgement. A rookie mistake. Right now, all of a sudden, Quickstar desperately needed a working headsail to sail upwind and, well, to get to NZ. The giant 150% genoa was flapping and cracking with vicious whips to leeward, and sheets all ahoo. A very sober face landed on everyone aboard.
I was tired; the crew were all tired. We were well into the groove of the journey, and our appetite had dropped to one meal a day. Life dictated by a watch schedule is deliciously simple. But a week heeled over at 30 degrees, bouncing around, night watches and short grabs of sleep had moulded us into tight companions in lock-step with a common and simple goal.
I was skeptical until I actually heard the sound of a waves hitting the hull abreast at 8 kts would be like someone slamming the outside with a baseball bat. Blue water washed across the foredeck, and found any hole in the hatch seals to leak into the forward cabin, soaking the Jimmy Cornell bibles below. And through a nuance of wave timing, Quickstar would sometimes shoot forward off the top of a steep wave at speed, and find no water on the other side.
She would hang in the air for a moment. We learnt to anticipate this by the surge upward, and had perhaps a second’s understanding between us, before the hull thumped down into the trough, water shooting out to the sides. This belly flop caused a tremendous thump and the rigging twanged tighter. When trying to rest below, the cabin timber creaked and groaned as the hull flexed slightly under load. I tried sleeping in the front cabin on one of those nights, and was launched off the bed into the air. I didn’t try sleeping there again. “Yachts are designed to take this sort of beating” we say to each other. I want to believe.
Right now, we had an immediate all-hands focus, and brought up the spare sail from below. Gilly delved into his magic cockpit bag (wondrous tools for every occasion) and pulled out some folding pliers for the shackles. We donned weather gear, lifejackets and harnesses. We clambered onto the foredeck amongst the noise with harnesses clipped into jacklines designed to arrest our fall if we slip overboard (but just don’t slip overboard). We pulled down the torn headsail, and bunched it into a sodden, molten mass on the deck where it was lashed securely with a stunning variety of creative and unsanctioned knots that seemed to be just right for the occasion.
The bow now dipped underwater in the waves without the sail to provide stability, and we worked quickly and carefully. The new sail was hauled up from below and dragged forward, shackles and knots redone with wet fingers in the wind. Mistakes made and corrected, and sheets pulled tight to fill the new sail with a whump. The backup sail was rust-stained, a bit mouldy, and beautiful.
Boat speed mounted and Quickstar surged forward again. I met Gilly’s eye as we clambering back to the cockpit. The soberness was gone, and replaced by wide-eyed excitement and satisfaction of us winning the moment. I went below and crashed onto the bed to mentally regroup. As Scotty summed up the passage later: “It was a good campaign”.