We have been making very slow progress since setting sail from Ponta Delgada for the Azores, due to very light winds from the South West. Nakee has been averaging 2-3 knots speed over ground. It has also been overcast most of the time with completely grey skies with cool temperatures, so very little solar yield and more generator hours.
Conditions on board have been rather comfortable with flat seas due to the lack of wind. As it has been spinnaker weather we got the spinnaker out, which I hadn’t used since the East to West transatlantic back in 2023-2024 and flew it in its snuffing sock.
That got us thinking and talking about the top-down spinnaker furler I bought in England in the fall of 2023 but had never yet installed. So, since the conditions were calm, and Drew, in particular was interested in the challenge of installing it, being an aircraft engineer by trade, we got out the top-down furler and spent most of the day setting it up. The top down furler uses a torsion cable to transmit the twist from a pulley at the bottom to the top of the sail, the luff of which is not attached to the torsion cable except at the head and the tack.
Despite attempting it, we found we had no way to pre-furl the spinnaker on the top-down furler’s torsion cable on the deck, as both the torsion cable and the luff of the spinnaker are longer than the 15 meter length of Nakee. We therefore had to work up the courage to remove the spinnaker from its snuffer sock and hoist it unfurled and without the sock. This is scary since, if we could not get the top-down furler to furl the hoisted spinnaker once up, we would struggle to get the sail down without the snuffer sock.
After a while we stopped trying to furl it, out of concern we would break something and potentially have the spinnaker halyard stuck at the top of the mast. As this had happened (for different reasons) on the East to West trans-Atlantic and I’d had to climb to the top of the mast at sea, I didn’t want to risk a repeat. Climbing the mast at sea is one of the physically most challenging things I’ve ever had to do and it left me covered in bruises and cuts. I really want to avoid having to ever do that again if at all possible.
Sure enough, our first attempt to furl the spinnaker on the top down furler failed. We were furling in the furling line, led down the port side of the yacht in fairleads, using the electric furling winch. Despite this spinning the pulley at the bottom of the torsion cable for a very long time, the torsion cable was twisting at the bottom without the top turning, like winding up a giant rubber band.
So, we had to lower the unfurled spinnaker without the benefit of the sock. We managed to do so without anyone being pulled overboard into the sea or getting any of the spinnaker sheets caught around the prop. Some of the sail went for a swim in the ocean, but we eventually recovered it all, even if very salty and damp.
After lunch we had a second go, this time with more halyard tension, and less tension on the spinnaker sheet. Eventually, after many turns on the pulley at the base of the top-down furler, the top stayed spinning with a bit of a bang and we furled it up.
The feeling of success didn’t however last long, as when we tried to unfurl it, it came out halfway and stuck. It turns out we probably had way too much slack on the working spinnaker sheet when we had furled it, which allowed a “reverse wrap” to develop, so we couldn’t unfurl the sail or furl it up again. For the second time we had to douse the (partially) unfurled spinnaker.
We spent the rest of the day trying to get the sail manually unfurled / unjammed from the torsion cable on deck, but gave up in exhaustion at 18:30 and packed it away in a state of disarray in the sail bag.
We still don’t know how or even if we will be able to get that spinnaker untangled from the torsion cable, but we think our best chance will be to find a big enough open space on land where we can lash either end of the torsion cable to trees, lampposts or similar, and try to work it out with the torsion cable being pulled in a straight line. It is a bit of a disappointment as we still have light winds and would have liked to keep flying the spinnaker. I’d appreciate any advice more knowledgeable sailors may have on this topic, or I’m going to have to give up on the top down furler and revert to the sock.
In other news we had a dove stowing away for several days after we sailed from Ponta Delgada. It was hanging around on the bow, the solar panels and finally on the wind vane indicator on the top of the mast, where it was spinning around like it was on a merry go round. Kelvin put out water and some of our bread for it, but we saw no evidence it noticed or consumed either and yesterday it appeared to have deserted ship, perhaps migrating to one of the passing cargo or tanker ships steaming back towards the Azores.
PredictWind has us arriving Gibraltar on Wednesday, May 28th or Thursday, May 29th. Winds are forecast to veer around from the North-West to the North and build up to 30 knots or so on Friday, so we should be able to increase our VMG considerably, even though conditions on board will be much rougher than we have had so far, and too rough to risk getting the espresso maker out of storage.
