At shortly after 0700 we changed MaRe’s night gown for her day time working dress. With reef 2 in the mainsail replaced by reef 1 and the genoa fully unfurled, MaRe was running above 7 KN already with the untrimmed mainsail. Thus, more than 8 KN where to be expected for quite some times of the day. This all would have led to a day distance of more than 160 NM.

But then….

… there was bang and the boom was on the cockpit roof and the mainsail was down as well.

Broken main halyard was my first thought but turning my eyes towards the mast I saw that the head of the sail was damaged. There are 3 ribbons, which are connecting the sail to the aluminum part of the sail head. All 3 ribbons are broken.

I knew immediately that we are safe and can sail – limited so – with the genoa. We simply kept and are keeping on with the genoa.

After storing the mainsail in the sail bag and clearing all lines up, I contacted the “maintenanceservice” on Hiva-Oa and described what happened. Pretty immediately I got the answer that they have a sail maker.

Therefore we changed plans and route and we sail directly to Hiva-Oa. We should be able to make until Sunday or Monday.

Then we have to see. That’s sailing as well.

We are progressing with an average SOG of 3.4 KN since the sail broke. We also had after a short rain shower a “Kartoffelacker” with only 4 – 6 KN for a while. With TWS of about 16 KN we make 4+ KN STW. VMG (velocity made good) to WPT is a bit higher and the most important one. What counts at the end is our arrival time and not and a certain speed we look at. Please keep fingers crossed that we 20 – 25 KN during the night.