Pitufa.at

For a few days we’ve been fretting about a change in the weatherforecast. Instead of the predicted steady easterly trades we saw before setting out, the forecast suddenly showed a strong blow from the NW when we’d be approaching Tahiti. Strong winds on the nose when navigating close to shore in a boat without an engine worried us more than a bit. So we were happy when strong winds let Pitufa fly towards our destination yesterday (despite the meterhigh waves that even managed to spit into our usually dry cockpit), but they didn’t last long and soon we were stumbling along with 3 to 4 knots again. This morning we got out the gennacker (a lightwind sail that we usually don’t touch, because it’s really annoying in handling) and after an hour of work the blue bubble was flying high up and pulling Pitufa with 5 knots. Hurrah! The joy ended with a loud WHOOOOOOOOOSH barely an hour later when a seam ripped in the thin old fabric. Shit. Getting it down was a hassle as always, but in o ur uncommon sense of urgency we got out the sewing machine to mend the problem. The sewing itself just took about 15 minutes, the rest of the 3 hours of repair was changing threads, needles, adjusting tension, etc. on our Pfaff that obviously wasn’t happy with the sticky sailtape we had put on the rip before sewing over it. At the end of this shitty day we were exhausted and hardly dared looking at the new weather report. But what a suprise, the NW blow has been called off! It seems that hard work and efforts sometimes do get rewarded by the universe