Oh wait, that sailboat is mine. And look, it has a... SAIL on it. (pause for cheers)
Blame it on homeland security I am told. Apparently our made overseas sail got stuck in customs for a 2 month inspection. I feel good knowing that all those people want to look over our sail and make sure it was made properly (ahem).
(ooooo, that's some major hardware on that clew.)
But onward we go. First a few weeks back Doug and our neighbor Tom took on the task of putting in the
strongtrack system. A simple task in theory, but it was like squeezing a pig into a leotard. The task went well into the night and required wine and chocolate.
Now the advertisement for this system shows a young lad about Zach's age pulling effortlessly at the main halyard (halyard = ropes that make the sails go up and down) and says "Even a 6-year old can raise the main with our system." Now previously it took one, sometimes 2 grown men to raise our beast of a main. So... beware advertising men. I WILL be putting your words to the test and you WILL be hearing from me if my now 7 year old can not raise this sail.
(Lovely new track, same old ugly running rigging...)
Onward again... the stack pack went on first. This is just basically a nice built in cover for the main. But if you have kids, it's also a tree house, and that's part of how our last one died. So we asked for extra reinforcements to be built in at critical spots to hopefully tolerate the tree house role. And we have established some rules for our chief tree house dweller to help extend the life of the stack pack.
And then yesterday that very expensive piece of Dacron gleaming in the sun, shining with potential finally took it's place on our boom and mast.
So now if we maybe get our new rigging from Dyneema someday... perhaps we can.... gasp... sail our sailboat!
