by Bugs Baer Tempest is hanging in there, as the boat and the crew — and a surprised whale — all took their bangs in today’s going. Last night’s hydraulic fluid spill cleaned up quickly after daylight. All the sails and lines started the day in working order, but the wind took its toll. Around noon we were reaching with the heavy asymmetric spinnaker in good conditions. Wind speed had been steady for hours at 18 to 23 knots. For hours we had been running under overcast skies with occasional darker patches. No warning. The wind punched us with 33 knots and slammed us over. We rounded up, and the spinnaker lost its wind. Then it filled hard. Everyone rushed on deck to take it down. The blast of wind was easing off. We lined up for a normal takedown, spiked the clew, and the spinnaker flew free to be hauled down, blanketed by the main. Now came the problem. The spinnaker came down about eight feet and stuck. No pulling would get it lower. About six crew were holding the huge sail sheltered behind the main while we tried to analyze the problem. The helmsman let the bow come up into the wind and suddenly the sail filled again, ripping it out of the hands of the gatherers. One of the crew was thrown to the deck hard as a line pulled under his legs rope burning his foul weather gear and leg. The helm came down´and the sail was tamed again. With the boat loafing offwind, Tomas Mark was hauled up the mast to switch the sail to a working halyard and attach a messenger line to the jammed one. It worked. The chute came safely to the deck undamaged, and the old halyard was pulled backward inside the mast. Studying the damaged line, Tomas concluded that the sudden wind had stretched the load-bearing core of the halyard, and the outer dacron sheathing stretched past its breaking point and snapped. Then it bunched up inside the mast instead of sliding smoothly out the halyard block. A smaller sail went up, speed returned, and repairs began on the broken line. Our ship’s doctor, Kevin McMeel, is a veteran of tens of thousands of ocean racing miles, including part of a circumnavigation with Ellen MacArhur. He said, ”I’ve never seen so many torn sails, damaged lines, or personal whacks, burns, and bruises in one race.” This is not Sunday on Long Island Sound. We have read the report of two spinnakers ripping apart and the pole exploding aboard Whisper. Even this bigger, stronger boat could not handle this race unscathed. She is now gaining on us at slightly better than her handicap speed, and is still our closest competition. ”You have to finish to win,” is the race wisdom passed around Tempest. The latest position reports put us still in the lead of our division. Nobody is taking it easy or pulling down the big sails. Whisper will finish about a day ahead of us, and the wind could go light as we slog up the Channel. One of our on-shore routers projects good wind and a finish by midnight Sunday, 72 hours away. Decent speed, but will it be enough? The biggest surprise of the day was a whale in our path. Ruud Blanc spotted a dark shape on the water’s surface, and seconds later Tempest felt a big thump. We had hit a whale, perhaps one sleeping. The boat slowed for a moment. A more direct hit could have brought down our masts. Looking back, Peter Becker saw the shape moving slowly away. We could not judge its size. Nobody aboard, with collectively hundreds of thousands of miles of ocean sailing, had ever hit a whale directly, and we felt badly about this collision. Ruud thought it might have been a humpback whale, but could not be sure. Below decks, the process of living goes on. We are shifting to our warmest clothes, we are at forty-seven degrees north, and air and water are colder. The food remains excellent — cold cuts for lunch, a chicken stew for dinner. The standby watch has been screening ”Band of Brothers’, whose solemn views of struggle somehow seem appropriate to our own challenging voyage. Ashley’s notes: By this point in the trip we were checking the spinnaker halyard every other watch sending someone up the rig to clip on the weather halyard. We they would disconnect the leeward halyard pull it out and inspect for wear and if there was any we had a spare halyard always ready would mouse the damaged one out and put the repaired spare in. Then reconnect the leeward halyard and back on deck we would repair the damaged halyard ready for 6 hours later.