Wednesday, November 13, 2013

You wouldn’t think it could take a whole day…but…..well, it pretty much did. The day started with me up the Mast with our two lazy jack lines tied to the bosun’s chair and me pretending I like being hoisted 50 feet in the air. Up, up, up Jim sends me til my quivering voice says stop and I manage to run the lines and then re-tie the ends back to the bosun’s chair as they need to follow me down. On the way down I spay silicone on the mast track..bugger for the 10 or so feet over my head that I couldn’t reach… I’m not going any higher!

About 10 feet off the deck Jim stops my drop to safety and asks me if I will marry him? Funny guy!... just get me down! That task complete, Praise GOD!, but I now need to sit for a minute to stop my legs from shaking. Shortly we are able to slip the mainsail bag in the track….probably the easiest part of today, slip, push & pull and its done!

Now, on to the big behemoth herself. The winds are not exactly light, so I am a little apprehensive about attempting this but up she must go. We unroll the sail up and across the cabin top and bimini, and in pretty short order have the battens placed and the sail on the track…huh….that went better than I thought, only a few moments of drama when a puff tried to fill the half secured sail and Jim had to throw his body on it to keep it in place. We stuff it very sloppily into the lazybag, which now resembles a very large green sausage strapped to the top of our boom, then manage to get the lazy lines secured.

After lunch the fun really begins, time to run the reefing lines. These are the lines that allow us to reduce the size of the mainsail when the winds increase. This requires me kneeling or sitting on the end of the bimini top, 8 feet off the deck, trying to balance my not insignificant frame on a set of metal bars 10 inches wide. All while wrestling with the sail that Jim has to keep raising and lowering at my direction, and attempting to insert and tie 3 separate lines thru 3 different points on the back of the sail (without tangling them), with the boom and sail swinging back and forth about 2 feet. Fun it definitely ain’t, and in a perfect world it takes about an hour. Our world is NOT perfect. I managed to get all three lines in and set, only to discover that all the lines are fouled around the mainsail bag (this is bad)…ok, take out the last one and redo it….and redo it…and redo it one more time until I get it right! I managed to retie #2 and #3 with slightly less drama, and finally can climb off the bimini and straighten up. Jim meanwhile has run the forward lines at the mast, with one only one little glitch, the are in the wrong order, which becomes obvious as we raise the sail and one of the reefing line slips out of the clutch and starts running across the coach roof. He actually looked at the pictures to double check before he started, unfortunately we reversed the forward reefing lines two years ago…long after the photos were taken.

Finally, after all the line adjustments are made, it is a series of small corrections to the lazy lines and sailbag to get it all positioned properly then drop the main into the bag and secure it…. 3:45 and we are done, and the green sausage is gone from our boom, replaced by a properly flaked and bagged sail. Oh, the glamorous life of cruising.