Rigging and Sails

I started the morning by removing the organizer blocks from the cabin top. Fortunately Dan came by and saved me from big task of removing the foremost cabin ceiling panel by suggesting that I pry open the aft edge only and reach in with a wrench to undo the nuts. That worked fine.

After handing in the cleaned-up traveller and deck gear I turned my attention to dropping the mainsail. Dan and Lisa were too busy to drive the sail to the loft so they gave me directions and the keys to the business Toyota pickup truck. I told them that I would be driving with a Western Australia driver's license but that it was my understanding that there was a reciprocal agreement between the US and Australia on mutual recognition of each other's driver's license. Lisa overcame her doubts and gave the OK then I wondered out loud why everyone drove on the wrong side of the road and had their steering wheels on the wrong side of the car. The pickup had a floor manual shift and thanks to the 25 years with my VW Beetle I had no problem.

The loft was very interesting. There were six people at work and they were all women. The place was cheerful with great music coming from somewhere. I asked about the building and it had been a US Coast Guard armory many years ago. The brief regarding the mainsail was simple: check it out to a standard for rounding the Horn and sailing back to Australia.

I returned to the boat and decided to drop the jib so that I could recover the halyard for a replacement. The wind speed was 3-4 knots coming from directly ahead which was good for rolling out the entire jib before dropping it. I rolled it out OK and dropped it but 2/3 of the way down the system jammed up and I could not get the jib either up or down. Fortunately the rigger shop was still open and soon Lisa came over for a look. She noticed that some of the screws holding down the extrusions (a series of tubes going up the length of the headstay) had backed out and were standing proud.

Soon Dan was up doing his Spider Man act and unshackled the jib to let it drop. The using a rubber hammer he loosened things up and screwed down the proud screws. Everything was safe and soon he will bed the screws with Loctite after perhaps reinstalling all of the extrusions.

What can I say? This was supposed to have all been fixed in Hawaii and I thank my lucky stars that we found the problem at the right place and the right time. If something like this were to happen at sea I'm not sure what I would do.

In the middle of the day Doug Roth came by to gas up the refrigerator. Unfortunately there was a third leak! It was in that same area where the tubing passed through the wall. Doug was undaunted. He sanded the entire area and epoxied the that entire section of tubing. He'll be back.