One of Those Days

One of Those Days

I had the feeling this morning it was going to be one of those days. Maybe I was overdue, Maybe it’s being so close to home. Maybe it’s because I haven’t slept more than 2 hours in a stretch for weeks.

The four protrusions you see near the top of the mast are foldable steps. They allow you to stand upright when working at the top of the mast. When not in use they fold away. On bad days, they double as halyard snags. Today was one of those days.

The main halyard snagged one of the footsteps while I was taking out a reef. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst, barring putting a hole in the boat, losing the mainsail ranks pretty close to 10.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the luckiest, I pocketed a perfect 10 by simply hauling the main down hand over hand. Don’t ask me how or why that worked. It just did.

Shortly after saving the halyard and keeping the mainsail in service, the collapsible boat hook jammed fully extended. No big deal, but an annoyance nonetheless. I managed to free the mechanism by ignoring the thing for an hour.

Walking the deck as I do every day, I noticed the bunji securing the top-down furler at the pulpit was missing. When I turned around to walk back from the bow, I missed my hand-hold and went bunny-hopping from port to seaboard and just managed to latch onto the inner-forestay before hopping off the bow and into the drink.

Not wanting to push my luck any further, I decided I had better stay off the deck, do as little sail handling as possible, and avoid any sharp objects. That worked for all of 40 minutes or so. I was forced on deck when a cresting wave hit us hard enough to gybe the boat leaving the poled out Solent and main back-winded and shaking the whole boat as if Neptune himself was having fits.

One of those days I guess. Tonight, I’ll strap myself down to the bunk to make sure I don’t fall  of bed. You know, just in case …

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