Friday, November 29 So far, so intense! By 1300, I was wearing my safety harness in readiness for pulling the second reef and assessing what the back edge of the rain squall would bring. The wind abated right as I unclipped the tether from its usual cockpit location in preparation for going forward, and it stopped raining, and James finished cooking lunch (creamy fusili pasta packet with a fat dollop of his leftover red sauce). So we put off reefing. Between the unsettled weather and the two boats quite near to us, I chose the option of eating in the cockpit. By the time we finished, I was hot and could feel my legs gaining a little more of a sunburn. It was a relief to hand the watch over to James and get below. One of the two boats is the sail training vessel (STV) Vela. She’s a big schooner run by the organization Seamaster, with which we have a little familiarity. There are 31 crew aboard and all but 9 are students. Neat to run into (ha) them out here. Seriously though, they’d roll right over us. I’m glad no one is running into anyone else. The other boat is a catamaran doing 12 knots. Whatever. Not my cup of tea. James made the call to reef after watching LoveBot struggle through a squall. I had to go out on the boom side and pull the sail free of the reef line because it was binding. My scary moment came after I leaned far out overboard to put eyes on the problem. When I was safely back inboard, I saw that the tether had come loose from my harness. I was just dangling there and didn’t even know it. It has an easy pull release in case you’re being[…]
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