Stack Pack Struggle
31 March 2020 | St Marys, GA
Capn Andy | Tornado Warning
We were working our way through the immense pot of bean soup. It was delicious but there was too much of it. It took 3 days to finish it off.
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I went up the mast with what I thought were accurately pieced together lazy jacks. They consisted of a long 24 foot piece that would go from the spreaders to tie onto the stack pack 3/4s of the way aft from the gooseneck. Two other pieces were added to attach to the 1/4 and 1/2 points of the stack pack battens.
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Next I slid the stack pack onto the boom and put the battens in the pockets of the stack pack. Immediately it became obvious that the tail end of the stack pack needed to be trimmed in order to reach the end of the boom and still clear the clew outhaul car of the mainsail. I took it off and used the soldering gun to cut away about 6 inches of bolt rope and adjacent material. The end of the stack pack will attach to an aluminum framework that I haven’t made yet. It will be attached to the end of the boom.
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I reslid the pack onto the boom and used the soldering gun to make holes at the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 points of the batten pockets below the battens. Then I started tying the lazy jacks to the battens. The mainsail was on the boom and in the way, so I hoisted it. After tying the jacks onto the battens I lowered the main. It was raised without its own battens in place and it wasn’t attached to the sail track. It came down in a heap and made a big mess. Then one of the pieces of the port side lazy jack slid down the piece it was tied to. This is not supposed to happen. The knots are designed not to slip but I must have slipped up on one knot.
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I couldn’t reach high enough to retie the knot, plus I was wondering if any of the others would fail like that one. I ended up using the electric bos’un’s chair to get high enough to retie the lazy jack. Imagine the no-see-um’s coming out at this time, swarming, flying into your eyes, nose, biting, buzzing as they fly into your ears. At the same time you have two lazy jack lines in your hands plus the controller for the bos’un’s chair. The winch on the chair is not like the previous winches which would stop and stay put when you ceased pressing the UP button. Now the winch motor starts to freewheel and you have to press it again and again until it hits a spot where it stops. Then you can deal with those pesky bugs, but don’t drop the lines, don’t fall out of the chair.
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I needed a boathook to reach up and try to clear up the mess of mainsail. The boathook was down on the floating dinghy dock, at least I hoped it was still there. There has been some theft in the boatyard these days. It was low tide, in many ways, and I had to climb down to the dock to retrieve the boathook, and yes it was still there, my fellow yardbirds had missed that one.
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Back up on the deck it was still hot. We had broken the temperature record the last two days with 100 on the mercury thermometer in the shade at the communal kitchen, and 94 on the old bimetal thermometer right next to it I kept working on getting the sail down in some sort of order. It looks like getting the battens into the sail will require a bigger step ladder to work on it. I left the sail in the stack pack, not completely covered, and called it a day.
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The next day was Pizza Night which we might not have held due to social distancing requirements. We held it anyway and the pizzas were great. I made 8 meatball parmesan pizzas and Fabio made 4 pies.
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I thought about the stack pack and how I could get it all together properly. It looks like I will have to take it all apart and put it together in a certain order. The clew of the mainsail has to go onto the boom before the stack pack can be slid into the boom’s sail track. The battens will have to be fitted to the sail before raising it and the sail slides have to be in the mast’s sail track. Then the lazy jacks can be tied to the stack pack battens and the sail can be lowered into the stack pack.
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When I went up on deck today I noticed the wind was blowing in 20 knot gusts, too strong to raise the main or work on the stack pack. When I checked weather underground’s website there was a tornado warning for late afternoon.
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The image is a recent photo of Fabio making one of his pizzas.