Breakdown on the high seas

This time it did not happen at midnight. At 8:30 this morning, while I
was at the end of my watch, the genoa fell on deck, again, this time in
the middle of a shower. What had broken was a part underneath the top
swivel of the roller furler, and there was no choice but get at the top
of the mast to recover the halyard and the sliding swivel. We are still
rolling heavily with light winds but sizeable swell. Olivier put on the
bosun's chair and I hoisted him up while he was clinging to the mast for
dear life. But the operation was successful. Then, once the swivel was
at deck level we realized that the broken part was the exact same one
than the one at the bottom. Se we swapped them and put a simple shackle
at the bottom for the tack point. We then hoisted again the genoa and
were back sailing at 10:30, which is not bad. And we did not lose 2
hours as we were still sailing under full main sail during the operation.
This being said, the day was not one of our best. As expected the wind
had dropped, but we are now in a different system and there are many
squalls and showers around us. The good news is that there is not much
more wind within those showers, just enough to speed up to 7.5 knots.
For the day, we covered 150 n.m. over the ground and we are now only
1287 n.m. from Cabedelo. We very much would want to use the Gennaker,
but with those squalls, I don't want to take chances and we remain with
full Genoa and full main wing on wing. I am still expecting to reach
Cabedelo on the 23rd morning. As long as the wind remains true to the
Grib files from MaxSea.