May 28th

So May 28th is the start date we have set for the second leg of the trip. I cannot believe the weather the last few weeks and truly hope we get some of the westerly winds we are looking for. Regardless, I am ready to go. To be honest, and to some folks surprise, I have been ready to go since the day we got back from leg one. :)

Since we have been waiting anyway, I had decided to get some restitching done on the head sail as some of the UV cover had pulled away in the last storm along with a 6 inch tear along a seam that got caught on the spreaders. I spoke with Paul today, the rigger from the sail loft doing the repairs and they still have not been able to get the sail down due to the weather. As most of you with a boat know, it's really tricky trying to pull a large genoa off a roller furler in 25 knt winds. For those of you who don't have a boat, to get a sail down from a  roller furler, the thingy that rolls the sail up at the front of the boat, you have to "pull out" or unroll the entire sail before pulling it down the forstay track. This causes a big problem in heavy winds and is basically impossible for one person to do by themselves. Tomorrow though looks promising in the early morning. With Morehead City being so close to the ocean, the sea breeze tends to kick up in the afternoon and stays pretty consistent through the night. Again, fingers crossed on this as we are running out of time.

Got an update on the winch. It is officially shot and the parts are near impossible to find. I will have to do some searching for a replacement when we get down to FL. In the meantime, we will use the winch that's there, it will just require a little more effort occasionally. Since leg two consists mostly of off-shore sailing, we won't have to, hopefully anyway, tack that often, so we should be ok.

I will have more updates to follow as the weekend gets closer.