We've not stepped on terra firme for almost 3 weeks so you'd think we'd be racing ashore. No. We stayed aboard and cleaned up below decks and cleaned algae and gooseneck mussels off the hull. To clean the boat we sat side by side on the kayak, attached ourselves onto the hull with glass suckers and worked our way along the waterline like a pair of window cleaners along a building. We never imagined that you'd get growth on a hull that's constantly moving but you do and under the sugar scoop at the back, the bit that has a fast stream of water, light and air had a covering of purple, shell-less mussels attached. A quick scrape with a metal scraper dislodged them.
The wind generator was earning his keep today. Strong gusts of wind, or williwaws, howl over the mountain and out of the bay. Not helpful when you have to drop the headsail as we did. On our approach to Fatu Hiva we were flying the twin headsail and had to lower the staysail / ballooner / spinnaker equivalent from the forestay. That was easy. Our mistake was to furl the regular headsail with a halyard still attached to the top. The attachment snapped and now David has to get to the top of the main mast without using the halyard we usually winch him up on. Our cunning plan was to use the halyard (rope to you and me) from the headsail to winch David up on and rethread the broken halyard through the pulley at the top.
We waited for a lull between williwaws to lower the headsail and got caught with a big blow. Fortunately someone was passing in their dinghy and came aboard to help us man handle a furiously flapping sail onto the deck and to secure it before it blew off into the big blue yonder with me hanging on to the tail like Mary Poppins. We'll need to come up with an even more cunning plan to get the headsail back up in windy alley.
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