Yesterday was spent dong an assorted group of small boat projects. None of them very critical but a number of them addressed various nagging issues that crop up on a boat after a while. An example is replacing a head pump plunger that was squealing and leaking each time when used. It did not matter how much silicon grease I would add to silence it. The fact of the matter was, it had just plum wore out and needed to be replaced.

We have been hoping for a day of calm winds so we could put up the mainsail and insert the battens. Calm days are a rarity here since we either get the southeasterly winds which are starting to dominate this region now, or we get the land and sea breezes. However, last evening, right at dinner time, the winds stopped. Thus, as soon as dinner was over, we threw on the outside deck light and pulled up the main, confident that we would be inserting the battens.

Alas, it was not to be so… As Mary Margaret hoisted the main, I discovered that I had failed to reattach one of the batten cars to the sail track that holds the sail to the mast. Damn!!!! I was so pissed that I had missed it. This meant that I would have to remove the small section of track that we had repaired right before our trip around Australia and reinsert the batten car after I loaded the batten car with new bearings.

This is not a quickie thing to do so I told Mary Margaret to drop the sail and I would work on this the next morning. We went to bed with smoke coming out of my ears. I was concerned that I had missed my rare opportunity of no winds.

This morning I woke up at 0500 with dawn just starting to break. The air was still calm so I went on deck to immediately start working on inserting the batten car. I went on deck so quickly that I by-passed shaving, brushing my teeth and my morning coffee. Fortunately, I had remembered to put my swimming suit on…

Within an hour I had the batten car re-installed and hoisted up the sail since the wind was still nonexistent. 5 hours later, still with no wind, I had installed the 3 bottom and longest of the battens. It is a real chore doing this by one’s self. It would have gone much faster if I had a tall helper but since my loving wife is just 5 feet two inches, she would not have been able to help push the battens in while I shook out the sail to remove the various creases that prevent the battens going in smoothly.

Thus, I had to do all of this by myself, a foot at a time. By 1100 I was exhausted and overheated. However, three of the five battens were in.

At 1500 I was rested enough to continue but I really needed help. The fourth batten was just not cooperating so I did ask Mary Margaret to come up and help out. She immediately saw the problem and being the brains of the family came up with an ingenious solution. She suggested that I use our wire fish. This is a long, flat wire that I use to “fish” electrical wires through tortuous routes. Following her suggestion, I climbed the mast steps, snaked the wire fish through the batten pocket until it came out the other end and then taped the batten to the wire fish. With Mary Margaret holding the batten, I pulled on the wire fish and in no time, the batten was in place. Hooray!!!! And all thanks to my life mate!! She may not be big in stature but she sure is big in brains!!!!

Now all I have left is the top, short batten and I can do this even if the wind is blowing since only a little bit of sail needs to be pulled up to install it. This I will tackle tomorrow.

Techno-Tip Of The Week: Installing Battens

As you read above, Mary Margaret came up with a great little trick to help smooth out the winkles in a sail as you try to push the battens through the batten pockets. This problem is manageable without her trick if you have two tall people who can work at each end of the sail and pull the sail taunt while you push the batten into the batten pocket. However, on our boat, the boom is up high and to reach the working part of the sail you need to be at least 5 ½ feet tall.

If you don’t have two tall people or if you are working by yourself, this trick works great. What you need to do and use your fish wire and thread it through the batten pocket. You will still need to work the sail a bit to ease the wire through the creases in the sail but it is a lot easier than pushing a thick batten through the batten pocket. Make sure the end of the wire is bent back and then taped so that there is not a sharp end to cut through the sail.

Once the wire is through, then just tape the batten to about a foot of the wire and pull the wire back through the batten pocket until the batten comes through. Now just guide the end of the batten into the batten car. Once that is done, you can install the plastic batten end to the leach side of the batten and tie it down or do whatever you need to do to close your batten end. Prettcy neat, Uh?