Entry for June 15

Yesterday evening we decided to leave the spinnaker up through the night. The big sail carries us at good speed downwind, but it does come with some risk. With just the main and jib, the boat can recover from any problem--it just turns itself into the wind and spills the wind out of the sails. The spinnaker is less forgiving. If something goes wrong with the spinnaker in heavy weather, it can hold the boat down on its side until the crew takes some action. It also uses quite a bit more rigging--six more lines running into the cockpit and a pair of struts braced against the mast--and more opportunity for things to go wrong. Still, the wind was mild and the forecast was for more of the same, so we flew it through the night.

Everything is scarier at night and flying the spinnaker is no exception. The wind and seas increased slightly--not enough to cause problems, but definitely enough to hold the attention of the on-watch crew. With the bigger swells, the autopilot was not up to the task. Not being able to predict the wave motion, it corrects the course clumsily and sends the boat yawing sideways down the swells. It didn't take much of that before steering by hand seemed like the better option. We hand-steered through the night, making between eight and eleven knots over four- to five-foot breaking seas. It's exciting surfing down a wave face in the dark--you can feel by the boat's bow drop into the wave trough without knowing how far down it will go before the next wave brings it back up.

-Jared