Deck Work Finished

Today I reinstalled the traveller. It is the original track with new blocks that will give me more purchase. I got everything started then got help from Anders of Port Townsend Rigging with tightening the nuts. He worked above with a screw driver while I worked below with a wrench. For once I got sealant just right because a thin bead of the material was squeezed out from both sides of the track. Later I fitted new lines.

I also worked with Dan and Lisa on the specification for a new mainsheet. I had found that the sheet was too short to allow me to push the boom almost abeam when running downwind. No wonder. We worked out that I needed 90 feet of sheet and my existing one was only 54 ft long.

Yesterday I installed the rope organizer and the padeyes for anchoring down the running back stays when they are not in use. The organizers are on black plastic-like blocks similar to the "Star Board" on which we bedded the stanchions in Hawaii. I would have preferred white blocks but black they are.

Yesterday I got a call from the sail maker and was asked to visit for a face-to-face on their findings. Lisa loaned me the company pickup truck and soon I was at the sail maker's loft for what turned out to be a one hour visit.

We went through their recommendations on the mainsail step by step and they all made sense. The total cost was just over $3,000. Much of that work would be to bolster the sail up and give it better protection rather than outright repairs. Then we turned our attention to the jib which I had almost not brought in because it was only one year old and seemed OK to me. The recommendations on the jib added up to just over $2,000. A total of over $5,000 was too rich for my blood so we went through the process again identifiying only the essential items. The total was reduced to just over $3,000. They could not complete the work before 17 August which was not acceptable to me so we agreed that I would return the sails on the last day of August.

The sail loft has an extremely good reputation for producing offshore sails that last 60,000 miles. Looking back, they were attempting to send me back out with sails to their high standard. However, I paid $5550 AUD, about $4440 USD for the laminated jib one year ago, a technology that the sail loft does not have. I paid $5709 AUD , about $4567 USD for the mainsail in Aug 2005. It didn't make sense to me to invest more money in the sails than I had paid for either one of them.

Today I put the mainsail back up and had a close look at it as I handled it. It didn't look that bad to me.