Pacific Cup '08 - Great Squall Sailing...a wrap...and one less kite!!

Sorry for the very short update this AM. It's been a busy day for us. Great sailing right now. REALLY great sailing!
So...we'll save the details for the bar, but the bottom line is that last night at about 3am, as we prepared to gybe in front of yet another squall we ended up wrapping the kite around the headstay. Once, twice, three....five times!! Couldn't get it to unwrap regardless of our best ideas until about 30 min later when we went ahead with the gybe. (Not many have gybed a "reefed spinnaker" like we did last night!) At that point, the same wind dynamics that wrapped the thing worked backwards and out came the wrap!!
We dropped the spinnaker to fix a small tear, hoisted another, and then re-hoisted the 2A ASAP.
Hurray!! All was well and much to our relief, we had dodged the biggest bullet of the trip.
Turns out it was not a bullet after all. In fact, it was a slow burning fuse...
An hour later as we rolled into another gybe, the spinnaker split along a couple of seams that were obviously stressed and damaged during our wrap adventure.
In any case, we have our backup spinnaker in the air, and are enjoying some fantastic downwind sailing today. Great combination of wind and waves, making for some high speed runs and reminding us why we do this race!!
As for the race, our screw up cost us about 10 miles last night, and that was reflected in the position reports and standings at 9am. It's going to be difficult to move up from our current 4th in class, but we'll keep her moving and see what happens!!
See you all soon,
'
-Jim
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