The wind had gone down a lot over the night so it seemed that we would finally be able to fly the spinnaker. We did a theoretical overview on how to hoist, manage and drop the kite. Also, since we had noticed the previous day that our weak spot when doing gybes was the tying and untying of the bowlines when moving the foreguys, we practiced this while on dock. We even made a small competition where we divided in two teams and then one person would tie a bowline, the next person would untie it and so on, passing it around and trying to see which team could end up faster. It was fun and really helpful.
By mid morning we had left Cowes and we started by doing gybes and gybes and gybes until again this manoeuvre was etched in our brains. In the end we were really proficient with it and were able to do two consecutive gybes in less than 4 minutes. Since the wind had died down quite a lot, we had between 10 and 15 knots, we were sailing with the staysail, yankee 2 and full main and the yacht was running fast.
After lunch we finally hoisted the spinnaker. The hoisting went quite well until we only had about two meters to go, at that point it opened prematurely and hoisting these last two meters required a lot of work. After hoisting the spi we needed to drop the yankee and I did a big fuck up, I took out too many turns off the winch and the sail starting dropping too fast. I was able to control it but this could have been dangerous for the people on the bow, I learned the lesson and will be more attentive to how I do this in the future.
Then Mike showed us the best way to trim the spinnaker and we took turns in controlling it and in being at the grinder to grind when needed. Then we did some gybes with the spinnaker flying and most went perfectly, we only wrapped it a little bit in one of them but we were able to unwrap it quite quickly. Gybing with the spi is not very different from gybing with the head sails, the steps are very similar, so it was all very familiar.
The day was coming to an end so we decided to drop the spi. This turned out to be the most difficult part of managing it. Getting it to go through the letterbox and into the cabin took an immense amount of work and needed a lot of people. These sails are so big that anything that you do with them requires a lot of effort.
Once the spinnaker was all down below we needed to wool it (tie it with little pieces of wool so that it is ready for the next hoist). This again took a lot of time and effort, the sail was all over the yacht and it took us almost one hour to wool it and put it in its bag.
We had gone downwind a long way so we now needed to do a lot of upwind sailing. The sunset was quite beautiful but quite cold. Once the sun had gone down we did a night MOB and it went perfect, we recovered Bob in a very short time and were able to confirm how visible the lights in the MOB and the danbouy are at night.
We had been sailing almost 12 hours by the time we docked and we were all quite tired so we all skipped the pub for the day, trying to get a good night's sleep before our last day.
Once the spinnaker was all down below we needed to wool it (tie it with little pieces of wool so that it is ready for the next hoist). This again took a lot of time and effort, the sail was all over the yacht and it took us almost one hour to wool it and put it in its bag.
We had gone downwind a long way so we now needed to do a lot of upwind sailing. The sunset was quite beautiful but quite cold. Once the sun had gone down we did a night MOB and it went perfect, we recovered Bob in a very short time and were able to confirm how visible the lights in the MOB and the danbouy are at night.
We had been sailing almost 12 hours by the time we docked and we were all quite tired so we all skipped the pub for the day, trying to get a good night's sleep before our last day.
