In article lutions,
"Capt. JG" wrote:

wrote in message
...
My CDI roller furling has its own halyard that runs in a notch via a
slider up to the top and back down to pull up the headsail. A few
weeks ago, I dropped the jib

snip tale of woe

The learning experience in all this? No matter how stubborn you are,
standing on a hot deck sweating and staring into the sun will frie yer
brayne.


Nice post. I'm sure we've all done something similar.

Here is my tale of woe:

Trying on my new (spare, secondhand) mainsail for fit before the
sailmakers cut it to size. Think; 'measure twice, cut once'.

Anyway I was waiting for a no-wind day and this morning looked
promising, so off I set.

The mainsail is 50' high, 20' wide at the foot and is heavy dacron.
Dunno how much it weighs. Lots tho, and 'difficult' as it's such a
handful and slippy.

Luckily I had bought a collapsible hand truck which made moving it from
car to boat wasn't too much of a problem.

Wheeled it down the jetty and hauled it on board.

Attached the top ring of the sail to the mainsail haul (rope going
upwards) and started pulling. Normally this would be easy, but I
discovered another effect from the bridge-meeting I had - the top wheel
(or bearing) is bent and won't go round very well. Anyway, I hauled and
hauled to get the sail up to the top. And up it went.

Did I mention it's 33C (or 90+F)?

Soon I was out of my T-shirt and also my shorts. Sweat running
everywhere!

The mast/sail connection is with 'slugs' - tied to the sail and inserted
into a channel in the mast.

Did measuring and marked the sail where it needs to be cut.

Had a sit down and a cuppa tea.

Tried to pull the sail down. Stuck.

So I slackened off the rope and went for another sit down.

The wind did its job and the sail began to move down in stops and starts.

By this time my knees are trembling and I am dizzy with exertion.

And I have a huge heap of dacron on the deck.

Sod the tea - just drinking great gulps of bottled water.

I am annoyed with myself cos its such a simple task and I just don't
have the physical strength to wrap up the sail and get it off the boat.

Huge effort and its on the jetty and I'm walking along this thin wooden
deck toward the hard. I can't see where I'm going as the sail is kinda
all over me with bits trailing! LOL

Get it onto the hard (which is about 5' wide) and find the foot of the
sail. (I was actually taught how to fold a sail by the sailmaker) and
it's normally a 2 man job. However, I do it and wrap it up with bungee
cords.

Back on the boat for a sit and drink.

Notice the dodger has a split seam.

Take down the dodger and roll it up - childs' play after that fugging
sail!

Roll everything down to the car and fill up the trunk. AC on - ahhh..

It sounds like a fairly simple task, and that's what I thought it'd be,
until I started to do it.

So here I am at home in more AC and I'm quite pleased with myself for
actually doing it despite the quad bypass four years ago!

--
Molesworth