SAIL DRAMA

I sat on the bow of our pitching boat, 400 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, looking up at the mess of carbon fiber and taffeta that was once a laminated headsail, thinking that this wasn’t part of the sailing dream brochure—nothing like this happened in the La Vagabonde or Delos YouTube videos I followed so passionately. But there was no way our journey was ending only a third of the way from St. Martin to the Azores. I had worked too long and hard to call it quits. Nor did I fancy turning west and motoring four days to Bermuda, my tail between my legs. It was time to get serious. One way or another, I was going to solve this problem.

As a former aircraft technician, I had hoped the preventative maintenance regime implemented on my yacht would hold me in good stead for our first ocean crossing. Our 1984 Moody 47, Ram, was a solid vessel with a reputation as a reliable bluewater cruiser; however, I had learned that boats were only as reliable as the owners who