Mast up, sails on..

Lots (and lots) happening and not a lot of logging go on so here goes..

First, off a cracking shot of "Sparrow" from fellow blogger "Stargazer" (link in the caption) who recently spent a few days in the harbour while on passage .. 

Picture courtesy/copyright "All at Sea with Stargazer" [clicky]

Mast up

Which leads me nicely into the point where I left of the last log - on the Thursday (21st April) the Jolly Boys convened and almost drowned before even attempting putting the mast up - t'other Dave had conceived of a plan to try out, for the first time, a used inflatable that had come to him, albeit in the depths of one of the deepest lockers in his boat, when he bought her...  

So it was that as I departed the shore to get all ready for the mast lifting party I was hailed by the aforesaid, who along with Rod the Mod had arrived early as he was so excited about trying his rub-a-dub. Convening on shore we all looked at it in a knowledgeable manner, as he connected up his battery air pump and proceeded to inflate it - the good news is that it did inflate, and better still, didn't deflate when he took the pump off...

Pausing only to grab the mighty Torqueedo he was going to strap to the back, he launched, attached the Torqueedo, and the transom, held only in place by glue that must have been at least 153 years old gave way and the transom fell off . His suggestion that "it would be OK" having been firmly rebuffed by Rod the Mod, so it was that slightly later three fat old blokes then found themselves in my tiny tender, with a Torqueedo on the back...  suffice to say that this log is proof we survived, but my sides ached for days after all the merriment while we wandered all over the anchorage trying to get to "Sparrow".. 😂

Having got there however, the usual professionalism reverted, and I have to say that without a lie, it was the best mast lift we've done - from shore to mast up in less than an hour...  hugely impressive. Beer and pork pies in the (un-forecast) sun and light breezes finished off the day before I gave them a lift to shore (single occupancy this time!) and returned to tidy up..  had enough time to rig the boom, and then headed to shore myself.

Genoa Tension

Weekend weather was rubbish, but I managed to sneak out a couple of days later on the Saturday to put the genoa on, checked the tensions of the standard rigging (OK - may need further tightening) before it started to rain in earnest and drove me home. 

Last year I was really struggling with the roller furling being hugely stiff -having thought long and hard about it, I think my issue was too much luff tension, so this time I put none on - the furler boom holds the luff straight so there's no need for huge tension..  just put it up and lightly tie it off, and I have to say the difference is little short of miraculous..  unrolls and rolls like lightening - superb!

Tender titivation's

For the May bank holiday weekend tides were again awful (6 in the morning, 6 in the evening), but the weather was glorious, so I instead devoted my time to making the tender trolley more user friendly - my temder is flat bottomed, but the trolley is optimised for a V bottomed boat, so as a result the tender just sits on the two high spots either side and slides around, or off, the moment you start moving...

My plan was to fit a piece of deck board to the trolley boat support - U bolted in place, which would accommodate the tender better - a couple of wooden uprights at either end would hold the tender in place.. 

Job done, and a huge improvement. 

Next log...  shakedown sail and and additional wrinkles...