Saturday 20 Nov, re-launch 2021, HHN day 52: Last velcro on dinghy. Then cleaned, chaps put on, launched, and lifted onto the davits. Prepared mainsail battens and tighten luff tube ready for sails-up tomorrow.
Woken several times around sun rise as the early-bird sports fishing guys head out to the river in charter fishing boats. The wake bobs Cloudy Bay up and down and provides loud “hey-wake up” slapping noises on the stern. Then a pause just long enough to doze off to sleep again, then the next boat passes! Well, at least I got to see a beautiful red sunrise for once.
The wind is dropping today, but the air temperature still feels bitterly cold. And still lots to do outside to prepare for raising the new Elvström sails. Tomorrow is about the only weather window for the next several days for this task. We need total calm conditions to raise the fully battened mainsail. First it needs to be hauled up the mast, then each of the long vertical battens need feeding in and securing before we can furl it safely away into the mast. This is the downside of fully battened in-mast furling. It’s a bugger to get the sail up and down and almost impossible when at sea. But as a sailing purist, this is all worth it to have a proper shaped mainsail and not just an ugly “genoa” hanging from the mast’s backside! However, I may eat my words in the future, if we ever get an in-mast jam, mid-ocean.
First for preparation is to clear the dinghy off the foredeck, where it has been lounging for the last 18 months. Now I could have just pumped it up, thrown it in the sea and put in on the davits in a matter of 30 minutes. But sadly, that’s not me! There are still things to get done on it, which can only be done with it on deck.
First is to glue the remaining velcro (sewn onto vinyl) on the inside the dinghy tubes. This is to be glued on the hypalon just above where the tube meets the flooring. It will secure the inside of the dinghy chaps (tube covers), which in turn will cover that annoying gap that usually collects sand and grit between hull and tube, which is often the cause-of-death for many dinghies. So, it’s the usual marking-up, masking off, sanding for a key then finally the actually gluing. All takes about 2 hours.
Then I decide I’d better clean the dinghy with Starbright dinghy cleaner/polish to get all the 18 months of “Washington soot” removed, and to protect it. It’s a pleasurable process that leaves the dinghy clean and shining like new again.
Finally, the chaps come out from stowage and go back on. Desperately praying they wont simply pull off the new velcro strips. Which of course it didn’t. The chaps are a VERY tight fit, so I install them with the dinghy partially inflated. Then, once on and correctly placed over the multitude of fittings, I inflate to full pressure and the chaps end up looking like spray-on jeans. A perfect sexy fit!
Now I’m normally quite a humble person, but I just got to tell you that a wave of pride came over me that I had made these dinghy chaps. And only 1 week after first opening our new Sailrite sewing machine. Mind you, their patterning, repatterning and re-repatterning, then construction took me a full 2 weeks. So I’m not about to make a business making these fiddly things.
After that, it goes over the side into the water and is soon back in its rightful place: secured up on the davits. And the foredeck is clear, at last. Lovely. Cloudy is starting to look like a neat and tidy sailing yacht again.
As it gets dark, I’m on the pontoon making up the long vertical mainsail battens. On our previous fully battened sail, these long battens were made up of 4m lengths all joined together. But the joints were prone to failure and each time we had to take the mainsail down (twice in 5 years) there were bits of batten left inside the sail. Very annoying.
But Elvström have clearly learned the lesson. With this new mainsail, each batten came as a single piece, all rolled up in several 2m (6ft) diameter loops. Over the summer I managed to get them all straight by storing them inside the mast. Now all I have to do is add-on the 2m long carbon-fiber tips, which go into the leach end of each batten pocket. It’s an easy job. But to ensure even these joints don’t break over time, I place a length of heat shrink over each one. I’d be very surprised if these come apart now.
In the evening I potter around making sure we are completely ready for tomorrow morning. I had hoped to pull the sails out of the saloon today (using a halyard) but that meant removing the cockpit tent and sprayhood (dodger). So we defer that job to the morning, when Ray will be around to help, at 10am.
The last job I get done, in the dark with my head torch on, is to sit on the boom and tension up the luff tube inside the mast. I had enquired to Selden how to judge when the correct tension is attained, and they came with an interesting answer. “Hold the luff tube with one hand as tight as you can, then activate the furl-in function on the hydraulics. As the furler turns, luff tube will tension-up. And when you can no longer prevent it rotating, the tension is correct”. I had thoughts that we should reply to them something like: “Thanks for the advice you gave my husband. He applied your technique, and the firemen are now trying to extract him from inside the mast. I think you may have underestimated his strength”.
Anyway, funny images aside, I did just as they advise, and it worked perfectly. The luff tube now seems to be at the perfect tension … whatever that is!
Meanwhile, below decks Oana has had another intensive day stowing all the provision. She has out-done herself; everything is stowed and there are cupboards that are still empty! If you want anything packed… Oana’s your girl!
We are pretty excited about tomorrow. It’s 20 months since we paid for our new sails and 12 months since they arrived to our marina in the USA. And they haven’t even seen daylight outside their bags yet. Let’s hope they damn-well fit OK!