Already the days are merging, one into another. The wind decreased in the morning so we put out the code zero sail. I finished the Time Travelers Wife which left me a little sad. The wind picked up again in the afternoon. We were making such good progress that Steve decided to leave the code zero up at sunset. I wasn’t too keen as the last time we had it up at night, the wind increased and tore our code zero while on my shift. Bringing down the code zero at night is also difficult. All three of us has to be up to do it easily which means waking two people up from their much needed sleep. However the wind seemed consistent and the thought of making good progress throughout the night finally swung us.
When I took over from Steve at 11pm the wind was a little stronger but still within the safe strength for our code zero. We were making excellent progress and regenerating too. I kept an close eye on the the wind for a couple of hours and all was fine. Then I began to notice these occasional gusts were the wind really picked up. Quickly it would go back to normal strength and I would relax. However these gusts began to come more often and I began dithering. Should I fall off and release the pressure on the sail just in case these gust should continue increasing. This would mean going off our track and heading more west than our preferred south heading. Or should I wake up the boys and bring down the code zero. We could then put up the main and head sails and continue with our preferred heading. I dithered too long. There was a sudden bang the code zero tore from top to bottom!
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