Day 19
The first day of our return across Drake’s passage and for most of the day the wind has not been favourable as it was blowing from the north. While preparing the ship for the forecast wind change to westerly , some excitement happened. We were handing the mizzen staysail when the bridle attaching the sheets to the foot of the sail came apart. The sail itself was ok and we finished furling the sail, but it was now useless until fixed. After a meeting among the permanent crew on how to best fix this, BM Stu was hoisted along the stay until he reached the foot of the furled staysail. He then hauled up the new bridle with the sheets and firmly attached it to the staysail. Stu made a difficult and scary job look easy and we are all impressed with his courage and with how hard all the BMs and voyage crew have been working today. Later in the afternoon, the wind finally changed direction (but kept up a gale force), so we tacked the ship. We are now heading roughly NNE at about 5 knots.
