Kaimusailing

When I went back to Walmart to get some Cento tomato puree I found the canned tomato aisle was mostly bare. I had to buy something for the pizza sauce, so I got a package of Italian strained tomatoes. I was shocked how the store had been decimated by hoarders. My favorite ham was gone from the cold cut aisle as well as most of whatever had been there.
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I took the remainder of the previous week’s tomato sauce that had been too thick and pureed it in the blender, then added the strained tomatoes. The result was a nice consistency and it tasted good too. I let the tomato mixture marinate for a couple days.
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I started working on the stack pack sail cover for the mainsail. I had to run the main up the mast on a day with no wind, then drop it onto the boom and temporarily tie it in place. Then measurements were taken according to Sailrite’s sail pack instructions.
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I wracked my brain trying to find the most efficient way of cutting the bolt of fabric. I didn’t want to waste any cloth. I ended up using about 16 feet from the bolt plus about 13 feet of narrow triangles to add enough cloth at the mast end of the stack pack where the sail is more bulky. At the clew end of the boom the stack pack was trimmed a bit to remove small triangles of cloth, matching the slope of the cloth added at the front end. The basic shape of the pack when spread out flat was like a large trapezoid with the wide end forward and the narrow end aft.
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I began sewing one of the triangles to the main bolt of cloth, then discovered I had put the wrong faces of cloth together and had to rip out about 13 feet of seam. It was an easy mistake to make, the difference in the coated side of the fabric and the uncoated side is very subtle. The coated side goes inside.
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I also decided to switch from zig zag to straight stitch. I could see the thread stretching when the seam was tensioned when I was using the zig zag stitch. After I changed the machine to straight stitch it worked OK for a while, then began jamming and I could hear the needle hitting something. When I looked more closely I could see the needle was at the extreme left position. The sewing mechanism shifts the needle from side to side for zig zag stitching but it should be in the center position for straight stitch. I took apart the end of the machine and found I could push the needle mechanism to the correct position but it wouldn’t stay there. Then I decided to try zig zag again and set the stitch width to 0. When I did so there was a click from the machine and the needle was in the correct position. When I switched to straight stitch it remained in the correct position. Later I found someone else on the internet who ran into this same problem. There is no mention of it on Singer’s website or in the user’s manual.
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It took 2 hours to get the machine working right and about10 minutes to sew the 13 foot seam. I completed both seams and the next day sewed the pockets for longitudinal battens that hold the sides of the stack pack up and open. The cloth is measured, marked, and a seam is sewn 2 inches from the edge of a fold that runs the full length of the stack pack on both sides. Then came the zipper that runs the full length of the stack pack. First I sewed the edge of the opening to the stack pack to one half of the zipper. When zipper/stack pack edge is folded so that the fold just covers the teeth of the zipper it is sewn to permanently lock in that fold. When both halves of the zipper are zipped the zipper is protected from U/V by the folds or flaps from either side of the zipper.
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Sewing the zipper is difficult because the fabric and the zipper try to wiggle around. The secret to get a straight seam is to put a lot of tension and carefully pull the zipper and fabric through the sewing machine a couple of inches at a time. Also the tension has to be kept similar for both halves of the zipper, if not the two sides of the stack pack won’t line up and can end up mismatched.
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While shopping for provisions I got the idea to make Kahlua pork and cole slaw, but after buying the cabbage I found no pork butts in the store. I settled on a smoked ham. I found a traditional Irish recipe for ham and cabbage, a week too late for St. Patty’s Day. I added kale, onion, and garlic to the pot. After cooking it forever we had it for dinner at the communal kitchen.
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The next day I put the stack pack on the boom and added PVC pipe battens to it, hoisted it with temporary lazy jacks using C-clamps and the mainsail halyard and marked it for trimming and hemming. At sundown I took some of the cabbage concoction out of the fridge and scooped out a portion for dinner. It was jelly like with green blobs of kale in it, lumps of cabbage, and red pieces of ham. I showed it to Doc and he said it looks like something you-know-who barfed up.
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I took a picture of him but inadvertently put the camera in program mode, so the photo was very muddy and dark. By boosting both brightness and contrast a usable image was made. With Doc is the Singer 4423 sewing machine and on the long table is the partially completed stack pack.