We made good progress after the last three days. In a few hours we will pass the Canary Islands. Due to the weather forecast we have decided to pass inshore of the islands, meaning we will go through Fuerteventura and Lanzarote on one side and the African coast on the other. This is where we expect the best winds. We will thus pass Tenerife far outside our visibility. But it is still good to know that I took on my first offshore sail from Tenerife a few years ago.

In the previous days we had multiple incidents with our spinnakers. First the tack came flying off the bowsprit, which turned out to be the tack strop failing. I was feeling bad since I had spliced that strop. On closer inspection it showed that part of it had chafed through and the loop had only failed after. The chafing was presumably caused by the sail collapsing repeatedly and then inflating again with lots of pressure. The positive take away: we recovered the sail, rolled it for hoisting, spliced a new tack strop and hoisted it again in under 40 minutes. That was a huge team effort and everyone was proud of that achievement.

Last night we then spotted lightning ahead. We hence decided to drop our spinnaker as to not be surprised with squally gusts flying this big sail. When rolling the sail for hoisting it, we noted a tear in the sail. Since the sail repair team has worked to fix the sail.

In the meantime we also head issues with our generator. It would simply not start anymore. After taking it apart, cleaning a few parts and wiggling a couple of cables, everything was working again. This is not really satisfying as we don’t know what was wrong, but everyone is glad it is working again. Especially since we need it to have AC power for running the sewing machine. We currently have a few issues with the sewing machine as well, but I am confident we can get those resolved as well.