A couple of days in the shed

[Dr. Peter]

Something we have started doing at the end of a trip is to use the voice recorder app on my phone and to make a list of what worked and what didn't work post-trip.

With the arrival of the Easter break I sat down and listened to what I had recorded three months earlier and thus begun two days in the shed.

Day 1. I decided to swap furlers between my code zero and jib. Previously the jib had a big high capacity furler and worked perfectly. The Code Zero had a small, test of concept, furler and did not always furl away the entire sail. Answer: Swap the furlers. Result: Very happy. The large capacity furler easily furls the code Zero and the little furler is enough to manage the jib.

Day 2, I have a mainsail which rolls up around the boom. I could only carry a boom vang on full mainsail. When I rolled up the sail to reef (I have reefing points on the leech) I had no vang. Answer: fit a horse shoe fitting which slides on and off the boom when reefing. Result: Very happy.

Then I made a one piece weather board. Result: It will keep the sunshine out.

Next I cut the winch cable and refit the hook, thus taking care of loose strands and a potential non-retrieval at the ramp.

There were two happy days. Where does the time go? And, for the record, I did not spend a fortune. $9.00 for the plywood panel. The furling horseshoe came off my old Hartley and had been sitting in the collection of boat bits for years.

Postscript:
The next day I managed to spend another day messing about with boats by rescuing my Maricat from under the trees, where it had been for nearly a year, and getting it, and its trailer, ready for a trip. And, I still have another boat in the shed!

[Dr. Peter]

An update about the horseshoe boom-vang attachment:

I was very happy with its use and effectiveness on sail trim on our recent trip to the top of Pt Phillip Bay. We sailed with both single and double reefs at different times. On one occasion we put two reefs in at the dock and shook one out on the water. What it meant that even though I had de-powered the boat by reducing the size of the mainsail, I could still maximise the off wind performance by using vang tension (I have no traveller).

Shaking out the reef was simple a matter of my wife disconnecting the vang and sliding the horseshoe back to me. It was easy enough to slip off the boom while keeping the cable end attached to the rotating boom end (the top of my mainsheet is connected to the same place - see pictures in previous post). I unwound the sail while my wife hauled on the mainsail halyard. I then reconnected my reefing line to the cringle in the leech. Once this was cleated into place the halyard was tensioned and I passed back the horsehoe apparatus along the boom for reattachment at the vang end.

It takes about the same amount of time to say it as to do it.