Sail Cover Ready

Pato at Work

Pato showed up this afternoon and fitted the plastic pipes into both sides of the sail cover.  It is to these pipes that the vertical cords of the lazy jacks are attached at three points. 

When I brought down the lazy jacks on my passage from La Paz they were too long to stow below and would have been dangerous on the deck, so I cut them in half with a hacksaw and stowed them in the forecastle.  I would have thrown them overboard but they were made of plastic.  It's just as well because from the pieces  Pato was able to see that it was simply 1” diameter plastic water pipe, and by joining the pieces I was able to establish that we needed lengths of 3.6 meters.  Pato took me to a plumbing place two days ago and we got two pieces 4 meters long.  They were bright blue in color, which was a better match for the sail cover than the previous gray pipes.

Today he fitted the pipes, cut them such that they fit snugly in the channels, and drilled holes at the ends and tied them firmly to the cloth with strong twine. 

Yesterday I made the required measurements of the boom and the distance to the lazy jacks turning blocks up the mast to model the required spacing and lengths of the vertical cords of the lazy jacks.  I dredged up my recollection of the trigonometric functions and used the arctangent, sine, and cosine functions.  Maybe tomorrow I'll get a chance to put it together and find out if the theory matches the reality.

I have only one more full day in MdP before catching the bus early on Monday morning for Buenos Aires.  Much as I wanted to put the lazy jacks together I devoted the remainder of the afternoon to rearranging the interior of the boat.  The task was made more difficult because below decks I now have the mainsail and headsail.  The quarter berths are now crammed bulkhead to bulkhead and I've also had to sacrifice the port settee in the main cabin for storage.  The rest of the interior is fine.  I moved water jugs and boat fenders to the cockpit.  I'll dedicate tomorrow to cleaning the interior and packing for the trip – and maybe sneak in a few hours for the lazy jacks.

The photo shows Pato at work on the sail cover.  The bright blue piping can clearly be seen.