It’s Sunday morning and, I can’t believe I am saying this, there’s not enough wind. Go figure. After months of TOO MUCH WIND, and constant fronts coming through the Bahamas, we are (fingers crossed) entering a week of moderate easterly trade winds and calm conditions.
I am afraid to say it but as the weather router is saying the same thing, perhaps I won’t be jinxing it by wishing for the best.
Yesterday was unusual with rain and drizzle for much of the day. Along with the rain came very light winds, something that I had been waiting for as I had to pull down my genoa (sail) for a minor repair as there was a small rip on the luff tape (if you know what a luff is that’s good, if not, don’t worry). However I didn’t want to deal with 600 square feet of sail on the foredeck unless the wind was light. So, after perhaps 6 weeks of waiting, yesterday was the day. Sail down…
As I didn’t bring my heavy duty sewing machine with me on this trip, I had to resort of hand sewing and adhesive sail cloth tape. It was pretty crowded up forward with the sail down. Happily, I was able to do much of the work prior to the light rain starting. As you can imagine, the sail repair tape wouldn’t have stuck well to a wet sail. Lots of sail to contend with.
I stitched the damaged area as best I could and then applied sail repair tape over the stitching. After that, more stitching.
The finished work. Not great to look at but it should hold till I get a proper repair done at a sail loft. I usually take the sails to a loft each winter for washing and repair. As I am no longer putting the boat into storage in the winter, I didn’t do that last fall. My mistake as the problem would have shown up and been repaired correctly. Well, good enough for now.
It seems that there are always problems, big and little on a boat and Pandora’s no different. As I had mentioned the other day, I had to sort through an electrical problem a few days ago. I was able to track down the problem but still don’t know how it happened. Here I am working away on a solution. Q: Did anyone notice that I have become a bit grey? Hmm… 
We are still contemplating whether we will leave for Cat Island today or tomorrow. We’ll have to think about it for a few more hours and see how the breezes develop. It could be a nice easy sail today. That would be great.
Our friends Russell and Lynn, aboard Blue Highway, got an early start today and sailed past us as I was sitting in the cockpit having a cup of coffee in my jammies. Nice people.
Off into the sunset, er, sunrise…
Perhaps we will be out soon. If not today, tomorrow. Happily, no repairs to do today. No, wait, I might jinx it… Never mind.
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