Wednesday 13 Oct, re-launch 2021, HHN day 14: Clean sail cavity and luff tube, check mast electrics, dinning out with Flora crew, and grease injecting seacocks. Quite a range of activities today.
The day starts with that Scottish-like rain again. The type of rain that, after a few days of it, could make you look around for a sturdy ceiling light fitting that could take you weight! So, I am happy to stay in our cozy saloon writing the blog for an hour or so until the rain dies out midmorning.
Then I venture out with a 12v battery and check the lights on the mast. I want to know they are all working before we put the mast up. All good there, but of course, I can only check the LOPO mast head LED light which is 8-30vdc. The other lights are 24v, so the best I can check is continuity and insulation on the in-mast cables. Same with the coax cables.
Next job is to install a halyard mouse line that will remain a spare. That way, if we ever lose a halyard, we should be able to use this spare line to pull it back through again. And with that done, the halyard and cables section of the mast is finished with, at last.
Now onto the furling tube section, where the mainsail rolls into. Over the coming days I will need to re-construct the furling system that I took apart to service and rebuilt. Firstly, Oana and I remove the luff extrusion tube and give both it and the empty furling tube a good clean. We don’t want our new mainsail going in there and getting dirty before we have even used it, now do we?!
But how best to clean a 25cm diameter tube that is 80ft long? First off, we pull a wet rag through it, using our extended “mousing batten”. But all that does is to wipe the lower side of the tube. Then we have an idea. We loosely tie wet rags onto the end of the batten and on the other end attach the hand drill. At low speed the drill spins the batten which in turn spins the rags which themselves flail the inside of the tube clean. It’s a bit like those older style car-wash rollers, spinning around getting into all the awkward profiles. Then it’s just a matter of gradually pulling the batten, and flailing rags, through the tube. It seems to work brilliantly and very quickly it’s as clean as a whistle!
Now, I have a regret. I should have also done this to the halyard section when it had been clear of lines yesterday (before I threaded all the mousselines back in). For a moment we contemplate pulling all the mouse lines back out agian. But no, too much hassle! So, we try something else. Again, using the long batten, we drag through a hose pipe, hoping to at least flush out the worst of the dead bugs and dust. It all goes well until we try to pull the hose back out. It gets stuck! After 5 mins of pulling and twisting the hosepipe comes out one end of the mast and the batten out the other end … but our engineered torpedo (made from club-soda bottles) remains inside the mast. Bugger!
And on that note, we pack up and re-cover the mast, because we have a dinner appointment with Ralf and Wiebke, owners of HR43, Flora. They are going to take us to have Korean sushi in Deale at 5pm. We will come back and tackle the stuck torpedo problem tomorrow.
This sushi place in Deale has a good reputation and we have been excited to dine there. Especially that sushi is one of Oana’s favorite foods. But again, we are disappointed. It was OK, but really nothing special. I guess we have been spoiled by better sushi elsewhere ☹.
During the meal, we do have good discussions with Ralf and Wiebke. They have cruised all over the Bahamas and have lots of places they recommend to us. Then we discover their winter plans are very similar to ours – to head to Mexico. But they are also going on further south, to Belize and Guatemala – into the Rio Dolce. So maybe we see them on the way, or even cruise in company with them. Who knows?
In the evening we pick up another plethora of Amazon deliveries. Yet more kitchen tools and UV proof clothing for Oana, and for me a new LED head torch (a Lite Band 250) and a grease gun. My last grease gun would not prime, so it’s going in the bin, and it will be a happy moment for me! This new one is brilliant. A LockNlub. So, for evening entertainment I set about injecting grease into all the seacocks. One nice thing about these new Groco seacocks is that they have grease injection points. One bad thing about these Groco seacocks is that they have injection points and therefore you feel obliged to grease them all periodically. It would seem an easy job. But 14 of them and most hidden into dark inaccessible corners of the bilge …. It is not easy. It takes me all evening just to do the 6 in the engine room. Mind you, 2 of those need access via the galley, which means emptying out cupboards and pulling up flooring. Pffff, it’s a bit of a faff.
By the end of it, at 11pm, I’m pretty greased up myself. Tired and ready for a shower, then bed. Zzzzz.