I’ve always wondered how difficult it is to go up the mast while at sea. We’ve had to now do it twice in the last four days, which must be unusual!

Soon after leaving Mooloolaba, as the light began to fade, the Genoa suddenly started flogging and then slipped down onto the deck and partly into the water! Once we had the sail lashed to the lifelines we realised that the top shackle had come undone and the halyard and top-swivel was still at the masthead. Sarah Belcher, first-mate for this leg, offered to go aloft, despite being hungover – they obviously breed them tough in NZ… We set the mainsail and ran off to keep the boat as upright as possible. George and I winched her up, she attached a thin line to the halyard and was soon back on deck. The yalyard was pulled down, sail was shackled (and the pin tightened properly) and soon we had all the canvas up again. This was all in open water, with about a 2 metre swell running. Sarah says it was quite “snappy” up there: not a rolling movement, but rather a sense of the mast trying to “flick one off”!

Yesterday we noticed that the main halyard had badly chafed about 12 inches from the shackle and I was worried that something had gone wrong with the masthead sheave, so up I went this morning. Now we were gently drifting up the Curtiss Channel in what is really closed water. It was rather pleasant. A bit more rolly than when at anchor, but no worse than when the Scotland Island Ferry wake rolls the boat around! Found nothing wrong at the masthead but got some pretty amazing photos!