Fun under Spi !
I looked into my bag of tricks yesterday and saw that one remained. In the 5000 miles I have now sailed on 100% Natural Energy I haven't had the occasion to put up the spinnaker, until now. With its huge size and immense power spinnakers are rightly regarded as the wild child of the sail locker, prone to flap about and have a tantrum instead of quietly going to bed when told like the well behaved furling sails I normally use. It is also more complicated to hoist and put in place because it is tamed by a sock of cloth with an open bucket on the end that is controlled by up and down lines to control the bucket, plus a down line that I can put on a winch, plus the normally required halyard, tack line (amure en FR, Clara) and two sheets! With so many lines running every which way it's tempting to take my grand mother's needles up to the foredeck and do a spot of knitting, as a sweater rather than a sail appears to be the most likely product of all the confusion. Once underway and pulling hard the result is magical. Surfing down the waves under the bright blue sky are the kind of days we sailors dream of. When the bright blue sky rolls into a cloudless starry night and the white bubbly wake stretches back to merge with the milky way soaring overhead then all fatigue, stress and worry drop away and it's just wonderful to have this chance to sail an incredible boat across such a beautiful ocean.
