The weather has been moderating.  Which means here that it has gone from pleasant, all the way to delightful. So yesterday morning we sailed down from our anchorage at Chub Cay down to a new spot about three miles east of Nassau.  Near the city, but still quiet and peaceful. It was in most ways a delightful day’s sail.  Only a few small issues blemished the day.  First was we did not catch a fish.  Second was when we went to unfurl our mainsail, we found this…

It’s not quite as bad as it might look, it is just a torn seam.  We sailed all day making good time with just our mizzen and jib. We need to get the sail down for repairs, and before we can get it down, we need to get it unfurled.  The problem is with a tear in the sail like this, it will not unfurl without help.  “Help” in this case being someone going up the mast to pull the cloth out as the foil turns.  “Someone” in this case being, yours truly.

Each little bit of sail has to be pulled out by hand. This is one of the downsides of having a sail that rolls up inside the mast. It makes sailing very easy, but when things go wrong, it can get ugly…

All the way to the very top of the mast…

Once out, the sail was lowered without further incident.  We are close to a local resort who has a wifi hotspot, so a quick search turned up a sailmaker in Nassau who can do the repairs for us–once they come back from holiday on January 3. (Where does someone who lives in the Bahamas go on vacation?) There are worse places to be stuck for a week.  Like, just about anywhere!

In the meantime, we are enjoying our anchorage…