Two kites in two nights

It has finally happened..... one of our kites, 'Bruce', has had to under go major surgery. In the early hours of Monday morning, although making good progress, helming conditions became very difficult. We were sailing on a beam reach and crash gybed (where the wind catches the sails on the wrong side, forcing them to violently swing over across the boat), although we had lines rigged to stop the sails fully swinging over, the boat needed to be steered to the correct course, however we were then too close to the wind causing Bruce to collapse and flap, at that point I heard a loud snap and the sail suddenly streamed behind the boat in to the water. At the time I was holding the line that trims Bruce and thought that had snapped. We quickly pulled the sail out of the water and I climbed out on to the bow sprit (the pole at the front of the boat) to detach the tack which was holding the sail at the bottom. We got it below deck and after assessing the damage it was clear it was going to be a big job to mend. Straight away a team of 4 of us set up an area in the saloon where we could do the repairs, the head (which is at the top of the sail) had ripped off and then split down either side, Bruce is roughly the size of a tennis court. We set up the sewing machine and stuck patches over the tears, and then began to sew round the patches, unfortunately the machine broke, meaning all 4 of us had to sew by hand around 30m of sail. Working in watch systems and through the night this job has taken us around 40 hours and Bruce is now finally flying again today! A very proud moment for us all; However the tasks are not finished yet as the night after Bruce ripped, Bwian was also damaged, so tomorrow morning (after I have caught up on my sleep) will be spent repairing him, not a huge job but perhaps a tricky one! So I have been pretty much out of all the action on deck for the past 2 days. With the two Kites out of commission the gap between us and the leading group has increased as we have not been able to fly the right sails for the wind conditions. What has been clear is that under difficult circumstances the whole team has managed the situation well and when there have been times of chaos and jobs needing to be done quickly, Matt has been calm and made sure we have worked as a team and understood what needs to be done.

Only a few more days till we get to Cape Town now, we have had such varied conditions on this leg, from cold nights and sunny days, to big waves and strong wind, then little wind!