From great to very bad!

Today started off with a nice downwind sail from George Town to the Emerald Bay Marina in order to get some fuel and provision before heading towards the Turks. The winds were around 25 knots on the stern which gave us following winds and seas, it was beautiful! The sail took about an hour. We were almost to the inlet for the marina, thats where things got interesting!

We were pulling the Genoa in which means I'm (Brittany) pulling on the furling sheet, causing the sail to wrap up while Jeremiah is letting the jib sheet out so I can have some lack. At about half way I (Brittany) noticed the furling sheet was starting to come under tension and then it came to a screeching stop! Jeremiah tied his line off and went up to the bow to see what the problem was and if it was something that we could fix quickly. Once up there he discovered that the furling sheet was completely tangled in the furler. We let the sail back out to see if it would untangle itself, that didn’t work so we had to come up with another plan.

We both agreed that we couldn’t pull in for fuel this way due to the high winds which would blow us everywhere. I mean I guess we could've completely let the sail out and have it flapping everywhere but we decided against it. Our only other option was to drop the sail. This quickly became some what of an emergency situation and could potentially be very dangerous. 

Jeremiah went to the bow, I turned us into the wind which was a struggle due to the power of the sail, high winds and high seas...The winds were at 30knots at this point which is cooking! On Jeremiah's cue I opened the rope clutch and began feeding him the Genoa halyard line while he pulled the sail down the track it sits in. Jeremiah struggled to keep the sail on the deck for quite sometime once it was down, tying it to everything he could with every line he could get his hands on. The winds were trying to blow it everywhere. I then turned us downwind while he laid on the sail, that way it would be easier for him to tie the sail down until we were safely docked. He got the sail secured and we motored right past the fuel dock into a slip. To much had happened all at once for us to focus on anything else other then getting tied off and untangling the situation. Plus the winds were suddenly up.

Jeremiah spent about an hour getting the knots out of the furling sheet. After getting it all sorted, (besides our sail now being down, we cannot raise it again until the winds lay down and a broken loud-speaker on the mast from the sail beating it to death) it turns out that we hadn't put enough tension on the furling sheet when pulling out the Genoa. Now we know to keep more tension on the line when pulling it out. We also learned how to drop the sail at sea and we got a little more experience working together in a dangerous, highly stressful situation. I must say it was pretty scary and shook me up a bit. You live and you learn I guess!

Besides a damaged loud-speaker, everything else is fine. When the winds reduce we will raise the sail again and Jeremiah will go up the mast to either remove the speaker or to do a temp repair until we can get a new mount out here. It's currently hanging in front of our steaming light. 

That's ok. We had a beautiful sail and are sitting in a lovely protected marina in the Bahamas! Who could complain about that?!