Mast and rigging almost ready to go

Monday 11 Nov, HHN day 31: last warm day for a while, so full-on outside jobs. Hydraulic motors finally go back in the furlers, halyards up the mast, bird avoidance devices removed up the mast and arduous manual refill of water tanks.

The day starts with still the furlers to install. It should have been a quick morning job, but has turned into a 2 day marathon. Yesterday they were finally cleaned of the clingfilm attack. Today the hydraulic motors are reinstalled. The genoa and cutter furlers go quite easily. Lots of grease packed in there, new seals and Tef-Gel on all the screws and surfaces where different metals will touch.
But at the mast furler (which was not attacked by cling film!) there is again trouble. This one didn’t get sealed from rain and the rag stuffed inside is soaking wet. All appears OK until Glen sees rusty looking water seeping our through the ball race – not a good sign. So it all comes out and taken apart. Lots of grease still in there but there’s also a lot of water and rusting parts. Oooph, and this was just fresh rainwater, not even salt water! Cleaning up the parts and removing the corrosion is another messy job in a bath of WD40. And reinstalling with packed grease, no less messy. Finally by late afternoon all the hydraulic motors are in and gladly functioning. It’s starting to feel like we have a working sailing boat again.

After a big cleanup, including Glen, time to re-install the running rigging. Prior to leaving the boat we had removed all halyards, washed them, and stowed them below. With the halyards back in it really feels like we are almost ready to sail.

It’s the last windless day till the weekend and one more hour of daylight left, so good opportunity to go up the mast to re-install the Raymarine wind instrument, the windex and VHF aerials. A job that was a lot easier than taking them off. The bin liner bag which had been taped on top of the mast to stop birds from landing on it proved to be very efficient. It’s now kind of in shreds, but still just about hanging on.
And on the way down the mast, Glen removes the garden wire from the spreaders, which was also very effective in stopping the birds using our spreaders as a pooing perch. Another job off the list, and one that was without issues or surprises for once.

While Glen is up the mast, Ray brings us the stainless steel lock for outboard. We devised a simple but effective outboard clamp lock from a piece of 1 1/4” stainless tube. So much better than our last kick, which rusted away.

We are running low on water, just one quarter of a tank left. We were planning to top up after we launched, but the marina switched off the water on the docks that very morning. And it will remain off all winter. We docked just an hour too late! But there is a water tap at the root of the dock, 200 meters walk away. So for the post-dinner exercise Glen arms himself with two containers and starts carrying water. Each time he gets back to the boat I help him siphon into the tanks. After 10 trips of 15 minutes each, we are full on both takes. That was the toughest 800 liter water re-full ever, finally finished at 11pm. What a life!
And we go to bed with aching backs.