When I started this blog, I thought this will be a very boring blog ……Maybe not.  Not if yesterday was any indication of the trip ahead.  I was at the helm and George was below.  Al was up top with me.  The winds were around 20 knots. We had the jib out to about 100%.  Something snapped.  The drum, that’s what I call it,  that holds the jib on the deck turned loose.  Greg was on Martini, our companion boat and wrote the following to the sail club.

Well got underway yesterday and decided to go outside, out in the ocean instead of going down the ICW. We have two boats going to the Bahamas this year, one is George’s 42 Tayana named Celebration and the other is a 33 foot Gib Sea, owned by Jack. We have Jack Sterrett, Jimmy Harrell, and me on the Gib Sea, named Martini. On Celebration George and Frieda Bloodworth and Al Barnes, who has a boat docked next to Celebration in Brunswick? Al we be leaving us in Miami and driving back to Brunswick, and then Jimmy will be jumping ship and going on board Celebration.

Well as Captain Ron would say, if it is going to happen it is going to happen out there Boss and it happen. We were sailing down wind with just the jib, or the front sail only. The wind was 20-25 with seas 3-5 foot, with the updated forecast we decided that we were going to pull into Fernandina spend the night and continue down the ICW until the weather improved.

We were about two miles from the entrance to Fernandina and the bolt holding the forestay on Celebration broke loose. This cause the forestay to fly freely in the wind and on the end of the forestay is a furling unit weighting about 30 pounds about the size of a soccer ball. Keep in mind the wind is blowing 20-25mph and you have a furling unit weighting thirty pounds on the end of a 55 foot forestay that is flying around the boat wildly with 3-5 foot seas. Al was able to grab and hold on to the furling unit and one point he actually was lifted off the deck. Freida was able to grab Al and they were able to secure the furling unit with some line to the deck.

The sail was being torn to bits during this hold ordeal. The sail is was only 1 year old. The sail even though it was torn we were not able to get the sail down and created a few problems docking. Once we were at the dock we were able to get the sail down and the mast secure.

Celebration has a cutter rig, which means it has an additional sail on the front of the boat. We this sail it has an additional stay, which attaches to the mast to the bow of the boat. If it were not for this additional stay the mast would have come down.

We have everything under control now and will get underway tomorrow down the ICW to Fort Pierce Florida where we are going to get a new forestay, roller furler and jib. We are suppose to be there on Monday and should be on our way to the Bahamas on Tuesday.

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