Saturday and Sunday were days to try and get the boat rigged. The tasks seemed straightforward enough, yet I was nervous about each of them. I don't know why. I may need to up my medications.
It was the scariest darn thing to raise the mainsail. It's such an odd rig -- the gunter yard with its jaws mouthing the mast, but left with nothing much to chew by the time the sail is all the way up. I know this doesn't make much sense. I'll try to get some better pictures to illustrate.
So, you try to raise the main, it gets stuck. Why? First, the parrel is too tight. Oh. It needs to be Just Right, apparently. Loose enough to slide upward when the yard is at one angle to the mast, but tight enough to hold the yard in place once the sail is fully raised and the jaws all but disengage.
Let me digress, briefly. See that garage in there? Wow, did I spend a lot of time in there over the last ten months.
Okay, done.
So, hey, raising the mast was interesting. All these lines and shrouds and whatever can make things interesting. I had left the shrouds (on the two sides of the boat) hooked to the mast, and just detached the forestay (at the bow), so the plan was to lift the whole mess back up right, poke the bottom into the mast step hole thingie, and push things upright so I could re-attach the forestay at the bow knee.
But it wouldn't go all the way up. It's not particularly heavy, so I took the time to stare at everything, trying to determine what was hung up.
It was the top end of the forestay, up at the top of the mast. It was wrapped in an unseemly way around the jib halyard block (the pulley thing around which the jib halyard, which raises and lowers the jib, travels, when things are flowing).
I had to lower the mast and slap at things for awhile, and they appeared to become better aligned, and then on I went.
I got the mast raised.
I got the mainsail up. Apparently there is a need to help the boom, with its own wishbone-shaped jaws, find its spot above the cleats on the mast. And a few other unexpected glitches. But I got it up there. It seems good.
The jib went okay too. But the halyard seems to be rubbing against something up there atop the mast, making it hard to pull. I squinted upward. It seems that the forestay is squeezing the jib halyard block up against the mast, and the poor little jib halyard is there between the mast and the block and the forestay and it is squeezed. This is a Serious Rigging Problem, but one I don't have to solve immediately because it will be months before the jib halyard, which isn't exactly going to be used thrice daily, will begin to wear.
But let me just say that I think this means I need a roller-furling rig, made by Harken, model 434, available at Maurie Pro Sailing ARE YOU READING THIS SOOZ ???? for my birthday.
Yes, well. There is an anomaly, pictured above, with the jib, but I am not going to go in to detail about it. I have since resolved it.The anomaly is also visible below, but I am still not going to reveal it. I have enough shame in my life.
The point of this picture, besides the fact that I was at the end of a roll of film -- oh, wait, what year is it? -- okay, no film, so, besides the fact that I already had the camera turned on, is to show some of the lines and things. Look closely and you can see the jib sheets running along the sides of the boat. If you look REALLY closely you can see them running outside the shrouds. Is that correct? I have no idea. It might be.
There are other lines and things, too. Frankly I'm too tired to think about them. But the following day, Sunday, I put the whole thing up again, and refined things a bit, as well as making Definitive Cuts in various lines and beginning the process of sealing the cut ends with some petroleum derivative.
More on that later. I have to go play my sailing-regatta video game now.
Did you catch that? Sailing regatta video game? No, there isn't one. I think the market for that might be just a tad small.
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