Kaimusailing

Missed the heat record today by one degree. Heat index 105. A shopping trip got various screws, including stainless set screws, for the furler, allen wrenches from Harbor Freight, a stop at the West Marine store in Glen Burnie, no, they didn't have anything that I needed. Not very big on sailboat hardware. At the fabric store I got bobbins for the sewing machine for sail repair. When I set up the machine I broke one of the plastic bobbins and then realized the huge spool of sail thread wouldn't fit on the machine and would have to be fed from bobbins both from above and below.
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The sewing machine needed some lubrication. It wouldn't do a zig-zag stitch. After a drop of oil on the wear points, it began to sew properly. The bobbin tension needed to be eased. Test stitches indicated whether to increase or decrease tension so that the stitch had equal tension. It turned out the genoa and sunbrella together were almost too much for the machine to deal with. It took all day to sew about 45 feet of leach.
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The parts started coming in for the roller furler. Torlon balls at West Marine, sta-lok fitting and D shackles from Defender Marine, nylon rod (for internal bearing on the stay) from Toro. The D shackles were installed on the upper shrouds in place of the bow shackles and were longer and stronger. The rig lashings had to be redone on the inner forestay and the lower shrouds. The mast was a bit more tipped forward. The length of the headstay from the bridle to the bail at the masthead now measured 46 feet 7 ½ inches. The measurement affects how the roller furler and headstay are built. They have to fall into this range and there is only about 3 inches of play in the roller furler's built in turnbuckle.
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A severe thunderstorm came through in late afternoon, when it cleared out it was getting near sunset. The strange cloud patterns were rosy and moving quickly, swirling around. I grabbed the 30D and snapped a few pix.