Threading halyards and snooty yacht clubs

Tuesday 12 Oct, re-launch 2021, HHN day 13: Install smoke detector and re-thread all halyards inside the mast. Then attend an OCC reception in Annapolis Yacht Club.

The day starts damp and miserable, with Scottish type rain. By that I mean misty and not really raining, but you still get soaking wet after just 10 minutes. Not the weather to work outside, at least not happily. But before we get to the day’s jobs, lets jump to the end of the day for a change.

We attended an Ocean Cruising Club dinner at the prestigious Annapolis Yacht Club from 5-7pm. Hoping to meet some like-minded fellow cruisers. We had last attended back in 2018, when we met Pete and Tracy Goss, which triggered us cruising with them for a while in the Bahamas. Back then it was a sit-down dinner with a nice speech. For what it was, the tickets had been a bit pricey we thought, but let’s give it a go again.
First disappointment was not being allowed to park in the yacht club car park, even though it was virtually empty. “Members only” we are told, by the gate keeper. Seems our $100 ticket didn’t stretch to parking ☹. From our street parking a block away, we walk into the club and once inside immediately felt like we are trespassing. It is definitely one of those snooty clubs where even paying guests are not really welcome. And plush!…. Oh, so plush. Especially the bathrooms, which have a cosmetic display (for use) that would rival any fancy shop!
We get to the reception area on the lower floor, where we are warmly welcomed. But where are the dining tables? None to be seen. Looks like our $100 only gets us very light finger food (chopped vegs and dips) and the privilege to be in this club… oh and to pay extortionate amounts extra for drinks. Now, I know we are stingy, but this must be the biggest rip-off of the year! This club is clearly making money from the various organizations who want to host a reception during this Annapolis Boat Show week.
OK, so there ends my grumpy speech!

While our presence likely brought the average attending age down by several years, we did meet some nice sailing folks. The OCC members do tend to be very generous and kind people, always wanting to help other cruisers in their area. We met again Cindy and Westbrook Murphy, whose back garden dock we stayed on 3 years ago. We also met Gerret and Katrin who are in Annapolis on their yacht Balena, a Hallberg Rassy 53, which they bought 3 years ago but due to Covid only just started to sail her this year. Very nice couple.
And once we were duly kicked out of the Annapolis YC bang on 7pm, we drove into town with them to a more suited drinking and chatting establishment…. A pub! Katrin and Gerret are very interesting because their younger years were in East Berlin and they often went on holiday to Romania as kids (Romania being also Eastern-block at the time). Other than the obvious sailing and HR talk, they shared a lot in common with Oana, who also spent her childhood under a similar communist regime. Listening to them compare stories reminds me what a privilege it is to have been born into a world of freedom. Thank goodness the walls came down and Europe was finally reunited and peaceful.

Now, back to the working part of the day on Cloudy Bay. With the drizzly weather, morning jobs were inside. Firstly, installing a simple smoke and CO2 detector/alarm in the engine room ceiling. For some reason, even though we have a full fire sprinkler system in there, I never thought to install a simple smoke alarm. Until that is, we were sitting aboard Uncle Mo (Noah’s HR55) in Corsica this summer, when its engine room detector had triggered. Opening the engine room door, we were greeted with billowing smoke. Luckily, we found the cause and stopped what could have become a serious fire. (It was the deck wash pump that had accidentally been turned on, run itself dry, then over heated).

Then it was back outside to the mast, with a cunning technique in mind to re-thread all 9 halyards, lift lines, etc that run inside the mast. With my endoscope I could see that some halyards must have been re-run in the past, likely by simply dropping a weight on a thin line down the mast. But these had run in all the wrong places and were also likely twisted around other lines.
I had put out a request on various sailing social media sites about how best to re-thread halyards and ensure they are not twisted. Got lots of answers back, but none that made any sense to me. Plus, the usual plethora of stupid know-it-all comments.
So, we have devised the Sansom-method (soon to be patented!). We joined together 2 of the long vertical mainsail battens to make one batten that is slightly longer than the mast. And on the end of it we attached a pair of club soda bottles to make a torpedo shape. This lets the batten run right through the mast, over all the various obstacles in there (fittings, foam tubes etc). But most importantly, as we run mouse lines with it, it feeds the new mouse line above any/all others that are lying on the low side of the mast. Get it? Well, here is the actual method:

Once we had established the Torpedoed Batten (trade name to be established!) would run through the mast OK, we took the bold step to pull out ALL the mouse lines currently inside the mast. (Note: the halyards had already been removed and replaced with thin mouse lines when we stored the mast last year). Now we have an empty mast.
Starting with the halyard that will naturally lie on the low side (in this case the staysail halyard, because the mast is facing front side downwards), we thread that line into the mast and hook it out through the sheave at the upper end and slot at the lower end. Then we simply continue running one line at a time until they are all installed, lowest to highest, leaving the boom topping lift till last. Looking inside the mast with my endoscope, it is now very pleasing to see all the lines running correctly and none crossing over each other. Phew! That technique took quite some thinking about. And some doing. But a great result in the end. There is nothing like having a neatly organized system in a place where you can’t see it. The pinnacle of OCD, you might say 🙂

So that was our day. Good progress on the mast and an entertaining evening.