My buddy Carson wrote this check it out...maybe buy it.. bulathebook.com
An excerpt from
Bula: Sailing Across the Pacific
I threw on the raingear and harness and quickly came out of the cabin. I stopped to stare at the dangerous flapping sail. I didn’t want to go up there. Trembling and scared, I was thinking of any possible way to get out of that mess. I thought to myself, you’re the stupid one who wanted to do this alone. I clenched my teeth with a mean sense of determination and crawled up to the bow. My harness line snagged on every entrapment that I passed, so I unlatched the carabineer to make it forward but forgot to reattach it to the safety jack-line.
I had to pull the headsail down completely. I released the halyard and began pulling the sail down. It whipped about, pounding me in the face. I couldn’t do anything but take the lashings. A flailing sheet ripped another pair of storm glasses off my face and into the ocean. I saw them sinking into the abyss.
Once I got most of it down, the wind was pulling the sail and me over the side with the waves washing over the deck. The sail dangerously filled with seawater. I was hanging onto the sail for my life that was full of hundreds of pounds of seawater. I was having horrible thoughts that if I lost the headsail I could triple my time to Hawaii. I couldn’t let go of it either because the folds of the sail had wrapped around me. I was slipping into Davy’s Grip.
I locked into survival mode. I wasn’t prepared to go over the side forever. I managed to get the sail back on the boat and wrestled it to the cockpit in two pieces. You have to laugh at death—you can’t let it laugh at you.
1 comment:
Oh Fanning Island...how I miss your simple charm.
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