As I woke up this morning and peaked my head out in the cockpit to check on things, I got slammed with more bad news. The rod kicker had broken loose from the mast and was hanging on by a single rivet (out of 16). After my initial shock passed, I got to properly asses the damage and also remind myself of what little importance the rod kicker is to my rig. It's essentially a sail trim I never use, especially since my boom is attached at the end to my arch. It can help shape the sail for a better trim, but I'm not racing and do very little trimming on this passage.
Even though it initially looked bad, it is a pretty simple fix. None of the hardware is broken, so all I need is to put some new rivets in. Wish I had a rivet gun. I don't even have the rivets. I thought about buying one, when setting up a spinnaker pole attachment, but for the size load I went with metal screws. In any case, the rod kicker isn't essential, so I decided to take it down before it could do any damage to the mast.
It was a pretty easy to pop out the last rivet, undo the attached lines and bring the whole rod kicker inside, put it in the v-birth and leave it be until a day when I own a rivet gun.
Captain Petter on S/V Bella Marina
The rest of the day was much better. Still sailing on a beam reach, like yesterday. Weather was partly overcast, my solar panel and especially my batteries were pretty unhappy about that. Only 1500 nautical miles to go. Only. Let's hope nothing else breaks tomorrow.