Polishing marathon begins

Saturday 10 Oct, HHN, boat winterizing day 10:
Woke up this morning without the usual blue sky staring at me through the hatch. Must be a dull day, I think. But then I remember we now have a white shrink-wrap tent over the boat, so of course there will be no blue sky!

Today we will do some mast and boom repositioning, then start the unglamorous task of polishing all the fittings that came down with the rig. Ray arrives midmorning on the Weaver forklift. I need the mast to be leading-edge pointing downwards and currently I’m holding it in that position by tying down the 2 remaining spreaders. But Ray has cut some plywood that we screw onto the trestles to stop it flopping over to its natural position, on its side. And once on its side, there is no way to man handle the mast back to where I want it. Soon, with the help of the forklift, it’s exactly where I want it, and the remaining spreaders can be removed.

Now to get it covered up, ready for the rain that will come later tonight. I want to keep it dry, otherwise it will end up with a pool of water in the sail-furling channel, which will eventually go green and unpleasant and difficult to clean. And certainly not the dirty mess I plan to furl our new mainsail into! ….. when it arrives. So covered it will be. I had hoped to get a nice length of left-over shrink-wrap plastic, but unfortunately Cloudy Bay proved to need exactly the width of the role (24ft) with no excess left for scavenges like me. But Trae says he will cover a narrower boat on Monday and will save me the excess. Till then, I cobble together various strips of plastic sheeting that I have on the boat.

Ray then takes all the stainless rigging fittings to the Weaver workshop and leaves me there to use a very nice powerful pedestal polishing machine. What would I do without Ray?! I want to get the fittings all cleaned up not just because I want to rid them all of their rusty staining, but also because I want to be able to inspect each one in detail, looking for any cracks of defects. I plan to reuse whatever I can when we re-rig, so I need to be careful there aren’t any dodgy ones in the pile. I spend most of the afternoon on the task till I get totally fed up with an aching back and neck. Oh, “Old Age” …. Please stay away from me! Blackened from head to feet with splattering of black polishing compound, I head off for a nice shower.

During the evening I start to compile a spreadsheet with all the rigging data, and also get ready a document to send out to the local suppliers and Selden in Sweden to inquire on prices. It’s going to be a big bill for all the required components, so I really want to get the best price. Then to bed to rest my achy back.