On Tuesday morning, as planned, we pulled a smaller VHF wire through the mast connected to the old wire. It moved through the mast very smoothly. Better than that it left plenty of room for the bigger wire that had gotten stuck in the mast to pull through smoothly too. We were very excited! Something was going right. Bill inspected all the rigging and the turnbuckles that attach the rigging to the boat. It’s much easier to do that with the mast lying on the ground. We had the rigger coming to check it too – might as well get a professional opinion. Bill found a crack in the turnbuckle that attaches our jib roller furling to the boat and the rigger confirmed it was a problem. It wasn’t a terribly expensive part to replace but having it fail would have been a real problem, at sea it could have been a disaster. We are going to say that that was the silver lining in this whole experience. Without the wire being stuck in the mast we would never have known the turnbuckle was cracked.

We had some more work to be done on the mast while it was on the ground but we scheduled it to be placed back on the boat that afternoon anyhow. I don’t know when this “Island Time” thing starts but I seem to be spending a lot of time watching my watch and the calendar right now… Of course we were a bit late getting the boat back to the dock to have the mast put back on. It seemed to go well and we went back and anchored in the creek again, packed up our laundry and a few other necessities and went to spend the night at our daughter’s house. We figured we’d put everything back where it belonged on Thursday and start moving down the Bay on Friday.

When we got back to the boat on Wednesday night Bill went to put the pieces of the floor around the mast so no one fell in on the way to the bathroom. Uh oh… the floor didn’t fit anymore. That could only mean that the mast was not where it used to be. That was a problem. Apparently, the mast was not mated with the fitting on the keel. (In other words - it wasn't in it's hole!) On Thursday morning we dinghy’d back to the marina and told them they hadn’t placed the mast properly. Since getting to their lift meant waiting for high tide we couldn’t even bring the boat back until after noon. This time it went much better though. Everything seemed to fit properly but Bill was still concerned after he reconnected all the stays so he called the rigger and asked if someone could just come and check it out for us. Oh… and you have to come that afternoon because we would be aground on the dock if they waited for the morning. They did send someone and he gave us the all clear and did a static tune of the shrouds – our rigging was in fine shape.

There was still lots of work to be done on Friday. Bill had taken all the cabinetry out of the galley so he could wire the new tricolor light that started this whole adventure. The picture above is of Bill checking the wiring. Normally there are lots of cabinets behind where he is laying. I’m happy to say they are all back in now. I’ve not always been so lucky when Bill starts a project like this. We had all the sails to put back on and a couple of other projects we took on to make the boat better for our trip this season.

We were lucky in a lot of ways with this. The weather was incredibly beautiful the whole time. The riggers were able to fit into our time schedule on short notice and we really appreciated that. The marina worked out OK. It was very convenient to where we had spent the weekend. We weren’t particularly happy that they told us the showers didn’t have decent water. We ended up driving to Annapolis and “borrowing” showers at another marina there every day. It’s been a busy day, it’s been a busy week. We aren’t exactly ready to go but we are leaving tomorrow morning anyway.