Kaimusailing

It feels like summer sometimes when the temperature in the boatyard soars into the 80‘s, but in the mornings it can be down close to the 30‘s. the no-see-um’s come out when the weather is just perfect and they torment you until a wind comes up or some other weather event makes it less than perfect. They make a great day a torment. When I get up from my bunk on Kaimu, I don’t go out on deck if I see the little bugs swarming around the hatch. If I have to go I have to go and the bugs crawl into your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, buzzing like tiny angry mosquitoes. They have a nasty little bite and often it looks like there is nothing there on your skin, but it hurts, and then you see the little bugger, tiny, easily squashed. But there are millions of them.
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I knew the work would progress, except I had my doubts, and after excellent progress the details come up to bite me. The staysail halyard block has to be positioned perfectly to prevent snarling of the halyard, plus, we have to determine where the inner forestay hits the mast, where the inner forestay tang will be, and where the block will be mounted for the staysail on the inner forestay. It’s one of those things that come out of calculations, and if you get it wrong, it is very wrong. Some like to have the headstay and the inner forestay parallel. They like the genoa and staysail to have the same symmetry, head to head, foot to foot, and leech to leech, like the Russian dolls that fit inside of each other, the staysail should look exactly like the genoa only smaller.
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I worked up the calculations and rolled out the rigging wire available from the same boat that donated the mast. I also had an ancient forestay from when Kaimu didn’t yet have roller furling. I had some larger diameter cables that would fit the inner forestay and the two lower shrouds.
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The inner forestay tang calculated to be 29 1/2 feet above the gooseneck. I took the fitting which had already been drilled for 12 3/16“ stainless pop rivets and positioned it against the mast, then marked and drilled 12 holes in the mast for the pop rivets. The fitting would be inside the mast with just the “nose” of the tang sticking out of a slot. The slot was marked and cut with the angle grinder and cut off wheel. The fitting was pulled into the mast using a borrowed fish snake inserted into the slot, fed out through the bottom of the mast, and wired to the eye of the tang. Another line was attached to the fitting to be able to pull it out if it got stuck inside the mast and the pull line parted.
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I was able to pull the fitting up to the slot, but I found the conduits inside the mast were in the way of the fitting and it couldn’t be raised up. I was very discouraged. We were having discussions of possible solutions to this problem. Mounting the fitting on the exterior of the mast was possible, but no one thought it would be strong enough, the weak link being the aluminum of the mast, it probably wouldn’t hold the pop rivets in heavy weather.
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The next day I fashioned a curved piece of stainless out of a short piece of stainless pipe. I tried to pry the conduits off of the ribs inside the mast that they were clamped onto. The conduits were split and fitted over ribs inside the mast. It was impossible to pry them off the ribs. I then tried to knock them off. I flattened the curved piece of stainless and hammered it against one of the conduits through the slot. The conduit came loose a bit. I them hammered on the other conduit and it came loose. Geoff the chemist was eager to help me and used a little bore scope attachment to his cell phone. We could look at the effect of the hammering.
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At some point the fitting was pulled into the mast but the retrieval line came loose from it and the fish snake also came loose, the fitting was now sitting inside the mast right under the slot. We made stainless wire hooks to grab at it. Very frustrating. Finally Geoff was able to pull the fitting up high enough that I could put the tip of a screwdriver into the eye of the tang. Then we were able to force it into position and pop rivet it in place. The fitting had two eyes, the upper one for the inner forestay, the lower one for the staysail halyard block.
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Another project was removal of the old spreader lights from the spreaders and installation of new spreader lights purchased on Amazon for $18 for the pair. The photo is of the unfinished crossbeam and a new spreader light.