Fixing things

In David’s last post, he mentions fixing the windlass brake he also mentions “problems with the mainsail leather straps”…well, those problems were that numerous of the old lashings holding the bronze cars to sail managed to break as the wind piped up on our new year’s eve sail. Just as things were getting “nice” with some good healthy winds it was chink, chink, chink, as each of the old lashes broke and the bronze cars slid down the track and hit the car below it. We doused the sail after about 6 broke free (click on this link and you’ll see a pic I took looking up at the problem. Just below the spreaders you’ll see one good car and then three eyelets which aren’t attached to the track. Then, a bit further down, another!). At the time, we didn’t know if the breakage was just the few old lashings or if it was happening to new lashings, too. As it turned out, it was just the few old ones left.

David and I spent last Saturday, at anchor “fixing”. David doing his rivets on the brake and me putting new leather lashings onto the remaining cars that had had (or still had) old leather lashings. I’d already done about 3/4 of them with new leather before putting up the sail, so my part took very little time. The sail is heavy, so I just took most of the luff off of the track and used some line to tie the sail down to the cabin top so it wouldn’t blow away while I worked.

We planned on sailing Sunday, but David and I ended up taking much of that day working on the rigging–me splicing thimbles into running rigging, sewing leather chafe guard over blocks and fittings which remain aloft on the topping lift and David making a becket for a block he’d rebuilt to be used for the staysail (and installing it) as well as climbing the mainmast to install my newly made topping lift.

David drilling for the rivets in the newly painted steel ring. You can see the uninstalled brake pad/shoe in the bottom of the picture, btw :

drilling