Quiet Day of Pottering

After my usual leisurely morning routine of listening to BBC news on the short wave radio over coffee and toast at 7 AM, followed by an entertaining hour of chatter on VHF 21, then another 30 minutes of more formal discussion of the day's activities on VHF 22, followed by reading the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, ABC (Australia) news, and CNN news on the internet, I emerged from the cabin at about 10 AM to plan the installation of a padeye or eyebolt on the foredeck for the staysail.

It did not take long to realize that there were two problems with the plan: (1) a new fitting would interfere with the use of the forward sampson post bollard and (2) just as the fitting for the inner forestay is held down by a cable under the foredeck to prevent the deck from being lifted by the load on the forestay, the proposed eyebolt would also have to be held down.

Not long after that Bob came by to say hello and soon he was on board discussing the problem. He agreed that a new fitting could not be put on without a wire strop underneath to hold it down.

We began to throw various ideas around and eventually came to a solution that I described as "simple and elegant".

The top photo shows what we did, which was to remove the pin holding down the turnbuckle and replacing it with a galvanized shackle that fit perfectly. The result was a suitable attachment point for the staysail tack. We treated the threads of the shackle with loctite and I will probably mouse the pin with stainless steel wire.

The middle photo shows the problem of a new thru-deck fitting interfering with the functioning of the samson post cleat - the gap is too narrow for another fitting.

The bottom photos shows another use of this shackle: an attachment point for various halyards that I want to remove from the mast to prevent that clang clang clang of ropes slapping against the mast.

After this minor triumph we raised the mainsail so that we could investigate why the thing is so hard to get up and down. We sprayed silicone on the slides and that seemed to help but eventually we ran into resistance. However, alert Bob kept showing dopey Robert various snags. The reefing lines held the sail back several times until we freed them completely by hand. Then he noticed that the vang was holding the boom down. These were traps that I've fallen into before and I would have spotted. But he showed me one problem area that I had not thought of. The outhaul was stretching the foot of the sail very tightly which was resulting in pressure on the slides via the sail and battens. I loosened the outhaul and saw the tension in the lower part of the sail immediately disappear. As I had noted before when sailing with Arnold, raising the mainsail was much easier with Bob pulling on the the halyard at the mast. There seems to be a lot of resistance from redirecting the halyard from the base of the mast to the cockpit. This is in spite of my having spent a small fortune on putting a top of the line block to service that halyard at the base of the mast. I thought after Bob left that it might be a good idea for me to lift the boom a foot or two with the topping left because in those last few feet before reaching the top I've probably been lifing up the boom.

Dropping the mainsail was another matter. Bob is accustomed to seeing the mainsail drop as soon as the halyard is released. With Pachuca it is another story. Because the current was pulling the hull at an angle to the wind the pressure of the lazy jacks on the sail was causing a lot of friction. We eventually dropped the lazy jack altogether. We still had a difficult time pulling down on the sail together with all our might.

In the end Bob was not too concerned with the raising of the sail. He though that if I eliminated the impediments of tight reef lines, boom vang, and outhaul the system is acceptable. I tend to agree - as long as the boat is going dead to wind.

However, he thinks that there is definitely a problem in dropping the sail, to the point where I should bring in a sailmaker to check, among other things, the tight straps between the sail and slides. I haven't worried as much about dropping the sail because I have always managed to drop it without too much drama. The difficulty this morning, in my opinion, is that because of the current the wind was putting pressure on the sail even though the boom was out. The sail drops much better when heading dead to wind and the sail is fluttering.