Day 6 brings our departure from Isla Socorro. It was nice to stop for a couple nights, I guess. But really in this light wind it's almost nicer being underway. For one thing the boat rolls a lot less then when we're at anchor and for another I sleep better since I don't have to worry about our anchor rode failing or the anchor dragging.
When we pulled down the mainsail at Isla Socorro I found that the main halyard was worn through about 25%. That's quite a bit, especially for only 3 days sailing. So I re-spliced the rope to get rid of the worn spot, it was right at the end near the sail, and added leather and tape to keep the spot where the rope rubs on the mast from damaging the rope. Yesterday I lay on my back in the cockpit and used the binoculars to look at the halyard where it goes into the mast. Sure enough, more wear. There are two aft-lead halyard ports on the top of the mast, one for the topping lift, the other for the main halyard. It looked as though if we swapped the halyard and topping lift port, the rubbing would be minimized. So that's what we did, 1 1/5 hrs before sunset yesterday. It seemed like it would be about a 20 minute job but in the end ran over an hour. We were successful in the end, and if the rubbing doesn't stop it's not for a lack of trying.
It's very strange that this should come up all of a sudden. We sailed 2300 miles from Raiatea to Hawaii on this tack and didn't have this problem using the same sail and halyard. The only thing I can think of is that there was a lot more wind on that trip so we probably had a reef in the main most of the time. I suspect when the main is reefed the halyard doesn't rub at an angle that causes it to wear. So another thing that could solve our problem is more wind!
{GMST}19|32|N|109|34|W|Mexico to Marquesas Day XX|Day XX{GEND}
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