Thursday 30 Apr, CY 47: New sails or not new sails? That is our Shakespeare question of the day. Oh, and we continue with the dinghy cover project.
It’s our allocated shopping day today but the dinghy is still on the foredeck so we will defer that task to Saturday. We had enjoyed the shopping breaks from the boat but these days it’s just a hot sticky experience to be avoided. Maybe making these dinghy chaps will save on our food bill!
Most of the day is taken up templating reinforcements for each of the extrusions on the dinghy (24 of the damned things!). Ideally, we should be using Shelter-Rite fabric for this, but as we don’t have any we will substitute with some stiff gray sailcloth that we have on board to replace the UV strips on the sails. If we don’t like it, we will replace later with the right material … if we can be bothered!
Talking of sails, we are getting closer to a decision on getting new ones! Elvström in Denmark is really giving us a very good offer on a new set of Membrane (EPEX) sails. 25% off, plus of course no European VAT. They are more durable than our laminated ones. Also about 20% less weight up the mast, and being membrane construction they have much better profile retention when partially furled. But even with the tempting offer, it’s still a very significant purchase for us. I’m super exited about the prospect of new sails, but don’t want to jump on my excitement just yet till my logical brain returns. After 50 years I know such inner excitement can dangerously over-rule common sense! Last time I had such a buzz was when we first saw the Highfield dinghy at the Annapolis show. We managed to restrain ourselves for a full 24 hours on that one! But that purchase impulse turned out VERY well, we love our new dinghy.
Our current sails are still OK for cruising. But like our old dinghy, we are not sure they will survive the rest of the circumnavigation. If we keep them, they will certainly need a BIG session in a sail loft. Lots of stitching is rotting, the batten pockets need renewing and both leaches needs replacing, not to mention the genoa shape is pretty shot now. Last refurbishment, 4 years ago in Spain, cost us Euros 3,000 and it’s likely to be more costly in USA.
They are 12 years old now, have done 25,000nm and possibly still good for another 25,000. But frankly, our biggest concern is a dramatic sail failure in mid ocean. For instance the mainsail ripping in half. It would be damned inconvenient and worse, potentially dangerous, because getting this mainsail up and down is almost impossible at sea due to the full length battens. It would likely be an up-the-mast job with a sharp knife. Obviously an extremely dangerous combination when out at sea. It’s one of those events I’ll do anything to mitigate. Something like that would certainly dent Oana’s mojo!
When crossing Gibraltar to Malta 3 years ago, the genoa halyard shackle broke resulting in the luff ripping and the sail going under the boat, in 20kts of wind. Even today we still have blue antifoul “scars” on the genoa! Luckily, we were 3 strong guys on board and took our combined effort to retrieve it. Luckily, Elvström’s Majorca sail loft was only 80nm away. Mid Indian Ocean with just Oana and I, would be very different story. There, I just persuaded myself! We will buy new sails 🙂
Back to the dinghy. By dusk I have completed all the templating and spend the entire evening till 1am drawing out all the small pieces onto the sailcloth. All 48 pieces of them (2 x 24 extrusions)! It will probably take me all tomorrow to cut them out. Oooph, lucky we have all this time on our hands!
Early evening we hear the familiar sound of the damned mooring buoy knocking on the hull, midships. When the wind dies after sunset, the boat lies to the slight current with the light wind pushing Cloudy passed the buoy. It’s very annoying knowing that dirty buoy is banging on our gelcoat. I jump into the cockpit, start the engine, reverse a bit and apply the bow thruster. Oops, that doesn’t sound right! On inspection, the damned mooring pennant has been sucked into the bow prop 🙁 Hmm, should I sort it out now, or wait till the morning? Likely there will be no wind in the night, but if there is we will be using the thruster propeller as a mooring cleat! So I’d better sort it out. Of course, the waterproof torch battery is dead (aaaargh!) so I dive in, in the darkness. The pennant is 40mm rope, thick enough to moor a bloody battleship, and it’s now a thoroughly knotted bundle inside thruster tunnel. Eventually, by feel only, I get it out. But the casualty is one of the safety bars, which I manage to pull off in the process. Why do we even have those bars I wonder? Rope always seems to pass them. Maybe I’ll be glad of them one day.
While swimming in the water I grab that f$%*ing buoy and tie a warp to its pony-tail (the knotted rope coming out of the top looks like a pony tail. Well, I want it to look like a pony tail so I can pull it!!). Back on deck I pull hard on that warp and cleat it, leaving the buoy hanging from the bow sprit by its hair. “There, take that Mr. Buoy, just try banging on the hull now”!
Mid evening, we are in the saloon with the hatches shut and the air conditioning running when I hear a weird noise on deck. Rain! It’s coming down very hard for once. The first real wash of the boat and rigging for almost 2 months. And with it comes strong gusts of wind. Thank goodness I got that mooring pennant out of the bow prop.
While running the generator, we are also running the watermaker. I notice the seawater temperature has jumped up to 30.1 degC as it rains. Odd, I would have expected it to decrease. It gets me curious, so I look up sea temperature on Predictwind. I’m surprised to find that, other than the south coast of Cuba, we are sitting in the warmest water in the Caribbean right now. Bahamas and the Windwards by comparison, are still a cool 26degC. No wonder it’s feels like a sauna here when the breeze drops.
A busy day today and likely more so tomorrow. Maybe we’ll need to have the weekend off!
