Yacht 'Albatross' abandoned.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

If it were strong then, why not use the staysail? Agree there is not enough luff tension on the main, could be a problem, possibly not. Fatigue is the great enemy.
Ann

The boat looks fine, the slightly eased mainsail luff is not a problem since it is already reefed to the max. From the looks of it I think the weather was worse previously. the waves and seas visible in the photos wouldn't justify that much reduction in sail area.

Its a long haul from NZ to Tahiti, pretty much upwind. Could have gotten very tiresome. You gotta be tough.

We just don't have any information about why he left the boat. Speculation is not productive.

My friends on Tumbleweed, Passport 40, Jim and Kathy Watson, took 35 days contending with seasickness and no comms (a broken SSB). The made it, dried the boat out, fixed everything, and took off for Seattle via Hawaii. That's toughness, and I credit them with an amazing act of seamanship.

[JC Reefer]

Are all these rescue notices meant to be super vague?

There never seems to be enough detail to understand the main reasons Why someone is calling for help.

[Woodland Hills]

You hear this all the time as if everyone back then got beerdrunk at breakfast. In reality they drank “small beer” which was below 2% alcohol in lieu of dirty water. Nobody knew about germs and microbes, but they did know that those who exclusively drank beers of all sort had much lower bouts of dysentery than water drinkers. Since all brewing begins with boiling water, which killed the bugs, any beer of any kind was better than the local waters.

Any water onboard in casks would have been used to desalinate the salt meat which was the primary food for long voyages, after first rinsing in seawater. The “water” for passengers and crew was small beer: when they ran out of beer they were out of water......