Cooling Off

It's finally starting to cool off a bit. It was warmer than usual back when we was still in the yard, but now it's more or less seasonal. I have to wear long pants and a fleece first thing in the morning, and even had to put on shoes yesterday -- there was a cold heavy dew on the decks.

That's only the second time I've had them on since we put her in the water, and sailed over here. In fact, I'm so out of the habit that I forgot to take them the last time I went ashore and had to walk to the store barefooted.

I've pretty well gotten the boat put back together after the hurricane. I'll bend on the genoa this morning, then clear out the port cockpit locker and start working on the transmission. Hopefully it won't be a big deal, and I can fix it with her in the water. If not, I'll have Coneys pull her over in Huntington and fix her there. Other than that, we're back to where we were.

Rig watch:

While I had the sails off, I spent some time re-tuning the rig. First, I loosened all the wires and took the bend out of the mast. This required removing the link plates and sliding the furler up on the foil far enough to expose the turnbuckle. I tied the dinghy underneath just in case I dropped something, but the one set screw I did drop stayed on deck, so I got lucky -- this time.

After I tightened the headstay and put the furler back together, I tried re-tensioning the rig, but had a hard time getting her straight. It looks like the mast is slightly out of alignment fore and aft, which might be part of the problem, but since I don't think I can straighten it by myself without damaging it, I've decided not to worry about it right now.

I ended up doing a lot of research on rig tuning and finally got it setup late yesterday afternoon. I'm not completely happy with it, but I think it has to do with the way she's sitting in the water right now. With most of the chain out, her nose is high, and she's still listing to starboard a little. I'll pull in some chain this morning and see if I can get rid of the slight list, then recheck all the wires.

As long as the mast is straight and centered, and the cap shrouds are about the same tension, I think she'll be okay. I should also note, that this is pre-tensioning. Final tensioning should only be done while sailing. I've got the cap shrouds and backstay tensioned to about 15% of breaking strength, with the lowers slightly looser right now.

Normally, they recommend heeling her over to about 15 degrees, then tightening the leeward shrouds just enough to keep them from being slack and floppy, then tack and do the same thing on the other side. The headstay is only used to position the masthead, and with roller furling, can't be easily adjusted anyway, so the backstay us used to bend the mast and control headstay tension, or sag.

Due to the difference in angles, they recommend not tensioning the backstay to more than 30% of breaking strength, which would put the forestay at about 40%. I'm not really interested in racing, so I'm not going to go crazy bending the mast back -- not to mention the danger of breaking an older mast offshore -- but I do want to make sure the headstay is tensioned correctly and doesn't sag too much. I also need make sure it doesn't bend the mast in the other direction under load, which could be just as bad.

Zoe watch:

We were visited by three swans just after sunset last night. They were so quiet I had to point them out to Zoe. The first two paddled right by us and continued out into the bay toward the mooring field, but the last one hung out with us for a while. I guess they're used to people feeding them, but since I didn't have anything for him, he continued on after a few minutes. Zoe was really interested and I think she wanted to invite him on board.