A stray halyard

 But wait there’s more ...

On our second  night at sea we could hear the slap/slap of a loose halyard (Code Zero - which is the rope located on the mast to pull up the spinnaker). Under the difficulties of working under an inky black sky, we accidentally caught this halyard in the staysail furler whilst bringing it in.  Took a team effort of four of us working on it, 2 on the bow and 2 on deck to resolve the problem..  Luckily some good luck came our way with calmer conditions and a gentle down wind roll.

We have had a beautiful night of true downwind sailing (typical of trade wind sailing).  We enjoyed a beautiful sunset whilst eating dinner in the cockpit with gentle rolling waves on the starboard quarter, northerlies between 12 and 16 knots and we could see the light of a full moon above the clouds.

At around 4.30am this morning our radar alarm went off. With 2 of us scanning the horizon every 10 minutes we were unable to see the lights of any traffic.  Physically scanning the horizon is difficult as we go up and down on the waves and lights can be easily missed. Patience is the name of the game when spotting the horizon. On the radar screen we could see a couple of objects off the starboard side but even with binoculars we couldn't make out anything in the water.  At about this time we were hit by torrential rains, driving right into the cockpit from the stern of the boat.  Intermittently the alarm kept going off so we changed course to avoid whatever needed avoided.  Consensus of opinion was whether the dense rain mass had triggered the alarm.  It was not a nice feeling listening to the beeping alarm and not being able to pinpoint lights of a vessel.

Due to the above we have been a bit behind time but during the night we have made up a bit of lost time doing a very respectable 7-8 knots under reefed main and engine.