We ran into our kid's dentist the other day, and just happened to mention that we needed new rigging. He said, he just finished getting new rigging on his boat and the guy was great.
I called him and he was available! I met him down at the boat the next week and we went over what I needed. I asked for a bare bones quote with all the work being done on the boat with the mast up, in the water. He got back to me right away and it was a really good price.
I met him down at the boat the next week to get started. The aft starboard lower turnbuckle had snapped during our last trip. So I had run a halyard in its place. He wanted to check the turnbuckles and the rig tension before he went up the mast.
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After considerable measurements he tackled the aft port lower turnbuckle. As soon as he started to loosen it, it snapped. He chuckled and said you did say the rigging was bad. I ran another halyard to replace that lower and he dug into the real work.
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I had requested a change in the quote to have isolated chromed bronze turnbuckles.Even though it gives more failure points it will allow me to swap turnbuckles or shrouds without having to replace the whole thing.
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Probably silly but in all my years of sailing I have never had a shroud fail, only turnbuckles. This was to be the first of many additions to the bare bones quote.
The next was he discovered the spreader tips had corroded away. So we needed to add new spreader tips.
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Next, since he was working on the spreaders we needed to sand and paint them.
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He needed to remove the spreader lights in order to do that, so the spreader lights needed to be rebuilt.
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Once he started getting the wiring apart it was apparent that the steaming light was toast. So a new steaming light was added to the mix. While he was at the top of the mast he noticed that the base of the antenna was destroyed. So a new antenna and installation was added.
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But that got in the way of the Windex so that needed to be replaced. He noticed the bulb was out in the anchor light so he went to replace that and the fitting fell apart. So a new anchor light.
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The lowers originally had been a lighter weight cable but for a small additional charge I could upgrade to the same size as the cap shrouds and backstay, so that made sense. He completed the task and it was beautiful. He did the initial tuning and we were ready to go. But the buying floodgates had opened. The mate insisted we replace our cockpit cushions.
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We were going to head for the island as soon as we finished tuning the boat. So we desperately needed a new dinghy. We needed a dinghy that we still could both pick up. Our old dinghy weighed close to 200 lb. So lightweight 100 lb West Marine dinghy would have to do.
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And oh, yes, the house batteries haven't been holding much of a charge. We better replace those too.
We picked a good day to head out and do the final adjustment on the rigging. Beautiful, sunny and a steady ten knot breeze.
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We tacked back and forth as I lay on the cabin top looking up the mast. Amazingly the rigger had done an excellent job. The mast was straight and true.
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About the only criticism that I had was the backstay was a little loose. After checking it on various points of sail, with and without the backstay tensioner cranked on I decided not to mess with it. It looked like when beating I just have to haul in the backstage tensioner a little bit harder than normal.
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We are off to the island! We left with a light five knot breeze, flat seas and a beautiful sunny sky.
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As is normal the wind keeps building as we get closer to the island. We are just off of beam reach and I have the sails set full.
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With the flat seas are speed keeps building. As we get into the funneling effect near the island I'm reading 7.7 knots speed over ground.
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Over a knot higher than calculated hull speed. We are flying!
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The mate commented that we can't trust the GPS anymore.
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We came into the island and they once again gave us the prime spot where our old mooring used to be.
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It was so good to be back in our home away from home.
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Our family has been coming here for 121 years, I've only been doing half of that. I know that many families have a place to escape. Whether a river runs through it, a island in a lake or it's a little chunk of earth out in the Pacific, a place that holds family memories is irreplaceable.
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