“The jib just blew into the water!” I shouted.

The 22 knot wind swallowed my words. I knew Michael and Jeff asleep below would not have heard me above the roar of the waves smashing into the hull and the screeching of the whistle as the wind rattled the rigging. It was 4 a.m. 100 miles north of Barbuda. The moon and stars were covered in a thick layer of clouds. Pitch blackness remained, except for the dim green navigation light. It was this green reflection that alerted me to the problem.

I stood up in the cockpit to get a better look still unable to believe what I had just witnessed. Suddenly the boat came to a complete stop sending me flying into the starboard steering wheel. The jolt of pain shooting up my ribs I was certain would leave a bruise. I glanced into the angry seas with my headlight. The jib, attached to the boat by the jib sheets and fixed at the bottom with a shackle to the base of the forestay acted as a sea anchor. It had dragged itself under the boat. ‘Now we are truly scuppered.’ I thought.

The sudden deceleration caught the attention of Jeff and Michael knocking them out of their beds. “Everything OK?” they asked as they raced up the companionway slipping into their lifejackets.

I sadly shook my head and flipped on my headlight. The jib lay submerged on the starboard side of the boat. The wind still catching the mainsail had us heeled over at an alarming angle.

We had left Hampton on October 31 in the evening, That was nine days ago. A minor glitch occurred several days past the gulf stream when the shackle holding the tack at the bottom of the jib flipped into the ocean. I crawled along the deck attached to the jacklines with a tether. It prevented me the fate of getting catapulted into the ocean…. like the shackle. I reattached a new shackle to the tack of the jib and we had no problems since then…. until now.

The Salty Dawg Sailing Association asks that the rigging gets checked before leaving to head south. That rigging check ended up costing me $5000. “You are good to go,” said Steve and Amber of East Coast Rigging with wide smiles as they wave to us when we motored out onto the Chesapeake.

One piece of advice I always give the crew is, “For sure, something will happen. We’ll have to manage it when disaster strikes. That’s all part of the adventure.”

Michael and I stared at the sinking jib worried it would get wrapped up in the keel and rudder, rendering the boat useless. Something similar had happened to me while I single handed on a Lake Ontario race in the middle of the night. My spinnaker take down did not go smoothly….. I spent the next hour slicing up the twisted spinnaker to get it untangled from the rudder and keel. A pang of anxiety flooded over me at the painful memory. Realizing we were 100 miles away from the closest help augmented the pain in the pit of my stomach. We were on our own.

Jeff managed to turn the boat downwind. Michael and I attached ourselves to the jacklines and crawled up the deck as the boat jerked us sideways in the waves. I reached over the scuppers and yanked on the sail. Nothing. It was too heavy to budge.

“We can do this!” shouted Michael. We both reached over and pulled with all our might. A handful of sail came up over the lifelines onto the deck.

“Again!” he shouted. It took all our strength, but the last of the sinking sail finally emerged from the depths of the ocean. We lashed it to the deck and crawled back to the cockpit exhausted.

Successful recovery of the jib!

With the wind now blowing 22 knots we raced along at 7 knots. We decided the jib halyard had failed and that was why the jib crashed into the water. We discussed using the spinnaker Halyard to raise the jib when it got light, but we seemed to be making good speed with the main alone.

We only had 123 miles left to go before we arrive in Antigua….. I watched as the sun rose this morning. The spectacular light show had me reminiscing about past journeys. I have done this trip to Antigua three times now. As we approach the end of the journey a sadness invariably passes through me. I don’t want the journey to end. The beauty and power of the ocean and wind are truly special. It alerts all my senses and I feel alive. Part of me wishes we could keep sailing…..

Trade wind sailing…..

My latest novel. “The Greatest Doctor”