Sail Cover Up

Repaired Sail Cover with new Lazy Jacks

I found time this morning to slide the sail cover on the boom and fit the lazy jack cords.  (The vertical cords of the lazy jacks keep the mainsail on top of the boom when the sail is dropped.)  Even though I had modeled the lazy jacks on paper I tried to make the job as fool proof as possible.  I started with 60 meters of 6mm nylon cord.  I took the two ends the cord up to the turning blocks just above the radar dome, fed them through, then threaded the ends through an eyelet at the back of the sail cover and tied bowlines at a shackle at the very end of the boom.   At this point I had done no cutting.  Back at the mast I brought the lines down to the goose neck where they would be held while I hoist the mainsail then cut, leaving enough line to tie the two sides together.  The idea is to prevent the ends of the lazy jacks from ever getting loose and flying into the wind. 

Then I used my calculation to site the first vertical drop and made an appropriate knot.  To the loop in that knot I tied the vertical and hoisted.  The cord was almost perfectly perpendicular to the section of plastic pipe below as planned. I  wound the cord several times around the pipe and finished with 3 half hitches, then I marked for cutting. At this point I knew the location of the verticals along the top line and the length of the verticals.  I dropped the lazy jacks, removed the vertical, then took the line down below where I cut two pieces to the appropriate length, burned the ends at the gas stove, then tied them to and hoisted them up.  I then raised each side of the sail cover to the height at which it must be when the sail is zipped up and tied verticals to the plastic tube.  I repeated the process for the other two verticals. I was slow as usual (about 3.5 hours) but the operation went without a problem.  (I almost said “without a hitch” but there were in fact 18 half hitches.)

I wound up with 5.5 meters of line left over out of the original 60 meters, which was a pretty good quantity estimate.

In my opinion I've wound up with a better setup than the original.  I've used heavier cord, and unlike the original, I've left enough length for lowering the lazy jacks to the goose neck and joining the two sides in front of the mast.  Thanks to Pato I've now got an extra 3 inches of material on each side of the zipper, and there is even a better color match between the pipes and the sail cover.

The photo shows a baggy sail cover because the mainsail is down below awaiting repair.

The rest of the day was for cleaning the boat and packing for the trip to Buenos Aires.

Later in the afternoon Pato came by and gave me more information on how to get from BA to North Sails and the riggers further up the river.  It will be useful to meet the people I'm dealing with face to face.  He then asked me about how I planned to get to the central bus station and after we discussed the option of taking a local bus I came to agree that a taxi ride was a wiser choice.  Pato and I then walked to the office and he telephoned the cab company.  I expect the cab at 7.30 AM