The first project of the day was fixing the torn main sail cover. One of the reef lines had apparently caught on it while we were putting the sail up, most likely in the dark. It is quite a project to get the cover off and back on when the main sail is on. It took about 4 times longer to get it off and on than it did to make the repairs.
WARNING: This paragraph is for sewing nerds. If you are not, please skip ahead. I first attached a length of binding to replace the seam allowance that had been torn. Then I reattached the webbing and sewed the two sides of the cover together again. Finally, I attached a short piece of webbing across the end of the seam using a box stitch to provide extra strength.
The next project was putting some bolts on a hinge at the stern of the dinghy. George had noticed that the rivets that held the hinge in place were starting to pop out. While George worked on that I repurposed some wide webbing we had bought to use as a sling for the dinghy. (The sling didn’t work very well so George came up with a new plan.) I cut a piece of the unused webbing and sewed a loop so we can use it as a foothold for our dinghy step idea. Stay tuned to see how that ends up working.
Our last project was to cut and make the bungee cords for the awning that goes over the v berth. We had one squall last night and few this morning that required closing the hatches so it didn’t rain in. I wanted to get at least one of the awnings finished so we can (hopefully) leave the hatch open during a squall. We joked that this means we probably won’t see another squall the rest of our time here. To make the bungee cords we measured what we wanted as the finished length for each cord when stretched. Then we multiplied that length times .65 to determine the unstretched length. We cut the shock cord with the hot knife, then used hog rings and hog ring pliers to attach the cord to the rings on the awning on one end and the hooks on the other. All of the supplies came from SailRite. We should own stock in that company.
We attached the awning and so far we are happy with the results. We will see what happens if and when we have another squall.
I just want to mention how nice it was to be able to use electricity to operate the sewing machine and the hot knife. With our old batteries we wouldn’t have had enough juice to do that.
To top off the day we saw another green flash as the sun set.
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