Another big task has been improving the guard rails. Over the last six years, they've stretched a bit, and Pip likes them taut as she pulls on them getting in and out of the anchor locker. Also, the net we installed, to keep the cats on board, has got very tired and faded. We still need netting: Roaring Girl has absolutely no toe-rail so things fall overboard very easily, but it only need be half as high as the old arrangement.
Our guard rails are fastened to the pulpit (the steel frame surrounding the pointy end of the deck) with pelican hooks, to make it easy to undo them should we need to do so in a hurry. These in turn are attached to the wire by sta-lok fittings. The point of these is to attach fittings to wire without needing a complicated piece of kit called a swage-press. In effect, you unwind a bit of the wire, insert a cone over the central element, seat a small cog over the cone, replace the wire strands into the teeth of the cone, and slide the fitting over all that, so you can screw the end-attachment in.
The nice folks at the manufacturers (just down the road from us in Essex) had sent us new cones, so we spent two frustrating days ripping out fingers to shreds as we shortened the wire. It's definitely one of those jobs which is perfectly do-able by amateurs but is much easier when you do it all the time. When you only do it three or four times in a decade, it's rather more painful.
That job, too, is finally complete, and Roaring Girl looks very smart with tightened rails, newly tightened stanchions, new netting and even plastic covers on the top rail.