Beryl is dreaming of far off places; I really think she’s ready to get back out to sea where she can happily chase her toys as the winds and waves push the boat side to side in the perfect pattern to roll her favorite balls, strings, and straws across the worn teak sole. We remain in a serene marina environment, enjoying the mild weather and doing projects.

I’m starting to get notes that say “what’s up?” from several people. Those made me realize I’ve not updated the blog about our goings-on for over a month! Why? Well, many of our projects are amazingly ordinary, small, and boring!

In early January, David completed his project of making cabinet doors for some key shelving areas; I then varnished them and he installed them. Here’s a pic of the doors about to be installed. Suppose I should take a shot of them after the fact, too. Or perhaps just let our readers wonder how it went…

We are preparing for our northward progress this spring–what that means is we finally got an EPIRB (great deal at the end of 2013 with rebate from ACR) and we purchased a Simrad broadband radar system with B&G Zeus chart plotter. We’ve pulled, out of storage, the radar platform the previous owner had and are trying to figure out how to install it on the mainmast without putting the radar in harm’s way of the foresail gaff boom. There will surely be an interesting tale of the installation once the radar arrives here in about a week.

I’m also replacing the temporary (going on 3 years…) rope guard lines (aka lifelines and breast lines) with Dyneema ones as well as going over, with David, every inch of rig and rigging replacing any shackles or other things which seem worn or potentially under-sized. I ordered a total of 28 thimbles for the various guard lines–that means 28 splices I’ve got to do. I’ll be really good at the Mobius Brummel splice by the time that project is done! A strange combination of new and old with those guard lines–I’m using very traditional looking bronze pelican hooks combined with the Dyneema. All the parts haven’t arrived so that project is just a pile sitting in the corner right now.

A couple weeks ago, we took off the mainsail so I could put replacement batten pockets onto it (new RBS sail battens ordered via Sailrite), David sanded and then I put 6 coats of varnish on the boom. It hadn’t been varnished since 2010, so it really needed it in some spots! We then bent on our “spare” mainsail–this meant changing some hardware on the boom to fairlead the reefing lines. That means I’ve got more cleanup and varnishing to do. Sigh. It also involved seizing on all the slides on the sail’s foot. The sail previously had a thimble system on the foot where one tightened up a wire running through the thimbles and matching thimbles on the boom to manage the outhaul. That system was designed for booms without a sail track.

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That spare sail is interesting–it is a Watts sail made decades ago for the 75′ 1958 Rhodes ketch Kamalii (Kamali’i) to serve as a spare mizzen sail during ocean races. It was never used. So, brand new Dacron that is decades old. It is also heavy 13 oz material. Our other sails are 10 and 12 oz. The sail may only last a season or it may last a long time–we don’t know. We purchased it from Minney’s in Costa Mesa, CA and had sailmaker Skip Elliott of Elliott/Pattison in Newport Beach take out the roach, shorten the foot by about 8″ and add a single reef. The sail had no reef to begin with. We had the reef placed high where our second reef is on the other main sail. We literally never use the first reef on that sail as we’ve discovered that in heavy winds the mainsail quickly overpowers foresail, staysail and jib combined.

Skip Elliot immediately recognized the sail while it was still in the bag when we took it to his shop–it turns out the lovely hand stitching was unique to a particular sailmaker that Skip knew from long ago. He said “that sail was made by Albert and will have number 7175 on it, it belonged to Kamalii and I saw it as part of a sail survey I did for the boat many years ago.” He thought the sail was well worth the work to make it fit Mahdee and that it would last quite a while.
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Watts sails must be quite recognizable to people “in the know” and it seems that would not include us, the Mahdee crew. Kamalii’s sail number must also be quite familiar to people as well. While we were putting the sail up at the dock, one of San Francisco’s Master Mariners came along the dock and said “That’s a nice sail–made by Watt’s, huh?” and “7175, that’s a SoCal number–is it Kamalii’s sail number?” Go figure. I then spent 6 hours painstakingly snipping the threads to remove the sail numbers from the sail! We have no intentions of racing Mahdee but I’m beginning to think we should put her sail number on her mainsail. We’d have to research it and discover which is her earliest and proper sail number. We have seen photographs with 188 and 288. A three digit number rather than today’s four.

Perhaps instead of longing for ocean passages, Beryl is just watching the birds near the boat. In any case, the migrating birds are enjoying the sunny days as much as we are.