Helen: Day1

I woke up just before my 6 am watch. There was wind! Very welcomed news after having to motor sail last night during my 9 pm to midnight watch. John who was just finishing his shift said he was able to sail throughout his watch.
I made myself coffee, enjoyed the wind in my face and the sun rising over the sparkling sea. I trimmed the sails and managed to get an extra knot in speed. A couple of dolphins swam by. I was happy!
By 7 am my happiness was diminishing with the wind. My comfortable fifteen knots wind was down to barely ten knots. I wondered how long it would be before I would have to put on the motor. Steve woke up at this point and after hearing me lament about the decreasing wind suggested we put up the Code Zero. Remember the incident yesterday when I turned the boat into wind instead of falling off while Steve was trying to furl up the Code Zero. Well this caused the the sail to be rolled up so badly and tightly making it almost impossible to unfurl it while hoisted up. After trying a few times to untwist it ourselves, we had to reluctantly wake up John to give us a hand. We had the Code Zero laid out on the front deck and just our luck, the wind decide to increase making everything harder. John and I had to sprawl ourselves on top of the sail to keep it down and stop the wind billowing it up, while Steve untwisted and untangled. Finally we got the Code Zero unrolled and up safely. Immediately the boat speeded up. We were delighted. John went back to bed and I went happily back to the helm. Steve then decided to look at the shape of the sail to make sure it was trimmed properly. He noticed a mark near the upper part of the sail. I had noticed it too but thought it was dirt (bird shit actually). After looking at it for a while we came to the horrible conclusion that it was a tear. We knew we had to bring down the sail straight away to patch it up before it got any worse. Again I went down to wake up John who fortunately was still awake. This time we had no problems bringing down the Code Zero. The wind had dropped a little and Steve had fallen off from the wind! With some good sail tape we patched up the rip and two other small holes we had also noticed.
Once the Code Zero was up again it was plain sailing for the rest of the day albeit slowly because of the light winds. The sea was almost flat so we laid around reading and listening to music. The wind finally died in the evening after dinner so it was back to motoring for my night shift. I was not happy.