Know What Else Flies?

So after the fish suicides, we had switched shifts a couple of times and I was napping when I hear a great deal of noise coming from the cockpit. Hubs is clearly fighting a losing battle with the sails. When I come up to help, I see that, yes, he is in fact fighting a losing battle with the sails, but as timing would have it, THAT was the moment that our forestay broke free, roller furling, sail and all and started swinging madly like a giant wrecking ball heading straight for A) Hubs or B) the side of Marionette. Didn’t really care for either option.

The forestay is the cable that runs from the mast to the front of the boat and helps with the overall stability of the mast and holds the headsail (the really big one that gives us speed). A pretty important piece.

After a lot of yelling and several bewildered head shakes, hubs was able to get ahold of the swinging beast and we secured it to the starboard (right) side of the boat. We assessed the damage, which admittedly sucked, but could always be worse, and determined that we needed to get the sail off – it had a huge tear in it and weighs a ton. An hour later, the sail is off is stored safely down below and we have secured the forestay (pretty much), and we should be able to motor safely to Key West.

I am reading back over the last couple of paragraphs and I am not doing the situation justice. It was terrifying and horrifying and lots of other fyings. We are okay, Marionette is okay, these are the important things. We knew sailing a new to us 40 year old boat 1500 miles was going to break something. My logical mind knows that this was, indeed, on of those things that could break, but in the list of possible things that could go wrong, I didn’t see this one coming.