Life has certainly calmed down again now that we are moving fast and the minds of the team are mostly focused on the upcoming week and the hoped for speedy trip to the finish. We would have to beat upwind against massive cold winds and big horrific seas. We put one reef in the main just before sunset as the first squall passed just to our north and the wind hit 30. The first reef point is not as strong as it once was as a primary soft clew in Kevlar failed. We are using the remaining back-up safety webbing, and hope this holds for the rest of the trip.
Sails are amazing pieces of equipment.
They are engineered and built out of super high-tech fabrics. Hundreds of carefully cut and shaped small pieces sewn and glued together. Care is taken at each step along the design and building process and then, using the main for example, it is bent on the boom, bolted to cars that travel up and down the mast, hoisted with a halyard strong enough to lift your house and then flown off a 140 foot all-carbon tube big enough for a person to go up the inside all the way to the top. Besides this one small failure, our biggest to date, it has really not slowed us down at all. Going upwind with the first reef in waves will not be possible as the webbing that is left will certainly fail, but this should not change much as far as getting to the finish.