“Whilst sailing in 25 to 30 knots of wind under full main, fractional furling spinnaker and staysail we were hit by a series of rain squalls. These clouds were rolling in from the South and had generally peaked with winds in the mid 30’s. Each time we had weathered them by furling the spinnaker ahead of time. The last squall however peaked at 50 knots and as we ran off in it there was a large bang and the boom snapped in two pieces about 3 metres from the outboard end.

The situation remained stable and as the wind immediately dropped we set about tidying up the mess. Justin went up on a halyard and got a sheet directly onto the clew of the sail and we were then able to remove the boom and get it below. We are continuing to sail downwind under spinnaker and full main and we are planning our repairs.

The first job is to make sure that if we fix the boom down below we can get it back out of the hatch! We have limited glue, resin and other useful materials and we are reluctant to cut up too much of the boat for the repair for fear of creating more work later. We are pressing on for the scoring gate for now and then for India if we can. Hopefully our shore crew will be able to fly our spare boom out to Cochin for our arrival there. In the mean time we have a real life school project to keep us busy fixing the old one.”

Ian Walker, Skipper