I was due to be driving a support boat for a classic yacht this morning, but unfortunately the weather is not very summery at the moment and the classic yacht crew were a bit nervous about breaking their amazingly beautiful racing machine as it is a) very beautiful and b) on its way to Switzerland for a race in two weeks. Yes. They do race yachts in Switzerland… 8mR WorldCup 2022
After a quick change out of sailing kit I headed back to Trilleen and put another coat of non slip paint down in the heads shower tray. That went surprisingly well, so I thought I would push my luck and try to tidy up the boat as I move towards the end of this refit building. I say tidying up, and that together with getting rid of the dust is very necessary, but the real joy is working out what stays on the boat and what goes off to store or is shared to other sailors who need it. I’ve realised that in Trilleen everything needs to be in boxes or bags. That’s because she has for a boat her length cavernous lockers, but those lockers are big enough that things can shift around and get crushed, otherwise damaged or plain lost. Everything therefore is ending up in boxes and bags and my labelling machine has been getting a lot of work. So much work in fact that the cutter jammed and I had to spray lubricant into it. I think I was probably meant to use some sort of special lubricant, but I only had the Devil’s lubricant: WD40 to hand so I do hope it still works in the morning.
The afternoon brought some better weather with lower wind so I decided to get the boom (spar which runs 90 degrees to the mast at the bottom of the mainsail) back onto the gooseneck. It’s such a relief to have Trilleen starting to look like a sailboat again. It turns out (as is very common) when the mast went up the jib halyard went a little bit the wrong way and had ended up on the wrong side of the spreaders. Not wanting to add to the list of things that needed a mast climb I decided to engage in some line throwing practice. After about nine attempts I got the line over the spreaders and was able to haul the halyard where it should be.