Breeze On

Included in the agreement for installation of the furling boom was an inspection of our standing rigging (the mast and all of the cables and fittings that hold it up). Yesterday morning Steve Madden emailed George with some photos and asked George to call him. We knew it wasn’t going to be good news. Steve said there was a surprising amount of corrosion for a seven-year-old boat, as well as a fitting that looked to have a cracked weld. Steve said that if he had made those findings while inspecting the rigging with the mast up he would have said we have a few more years before the rigging should be replaced. Since the mast was already off he suggested we go ahead and replace the rigging now. George and I agreed that we would have trouble trusting our rigging now if we didn’t replace it. George told Steve to go ahead. Of course, it will mean more time and more money. Cha-Ching! Sigh... We had planned to stay in the area on the boat for as long as ten days. Now we have decided to motor ho...

We left home Saturday morning and mostly motored to the Rhode River on the western shore. On Sunday we motored 10 miles in light winds to Annapolis and picked up a mooring in the mooring field. We took the jib down, and George disconnected the mainsail cars—they connect the mainsail to the mast—as well as the reef lines. When all of that was done we put the dinghy in the water and dinghied the short distance to shore. The crowd in Annapolis was huge and it really freaked George out. We have avoided any and all crowds for months now and George had no desire to be in the midst of one, even though almost everyone was wearing a mask. We detoured to some side streets that we knew from visiting Pam when she attended St. John’s College and, after taking a brief walk, dinghied back to Breeze On. Numerous boats came into and out of the harbor all afternoon and into the evening. Their wakes churned up quite a chop in the harbor which didn’t calm down until bedtime.  This morning we dropped t...

When we were in the Bahamas last winter we noticed several boats with in-boom furling systems. The first two we noticed were at the marina in Spanish Wells where we checked in. The system on these boats were made by Schaefer Marine and the owners both liked them. We had known about in-boom furling for years but had never seriously considered it until we began talking about it with people who had it on their boats. As the name implies, the system works by furling the mainsail on a spindle within the boom. The advantages of in-boom furling are: -practically unlimited options for reefing the mainsail  -no lazy jack lines to snag when raising the mainsail -no reef lines to sort out -no sail cover  The disadvantages are: -the expense -the need to carefully maintain proper tension on the halyard and furling line, and maintain proper angle of the boom to ensure the sail furls evenly on the spindle -the boom is heavier I believe our interest was piqued when we arrived in the Bahamas b...