Saturday 22nd February 2025
Finally, after weeks of dreich, windy weather with a named storm thrown into the mix, Éowyn was particularly wild, the yard were able to get the mast unstepped from the deck.
I arrived down at the yard to see the mast off the boat and looking rather green with alge. The first job was to find a bucket, hot water and a brush and start the job of cleaning the muck off. Surprizing how long that took, but very pleasing when I finished.
The next job was to sort out the halyards, knowing I had already caused one mousing line to fall down the mast did complicate the job. Just a matter of working out how to use the existing halyard to pull a new mousing line through then use that to thread the genoa halyard through.
A mousing line was attached to the bottom of the main halyard and then drawn up the mast. The next challenge was to pull the thin mousing line out of the gap beneath the sheaves then thread the halyard round the sheave, attach it to the mousing line, feed all of the lines back into the mast and pull gently.
Flushed with success I proceed to the topping lift only to lose that line and had to repeat the 'rescue' process again! I have replaced the topping lift with a second 10mm halyard as this gives me a spare should there ever be a problem with the main halyard.
With all of the halyards safely back on the mast it was time to move to the radar reflector and attach a couple of lines from the cap shroud round the reflector then off to the other side. This is to stop any halyard from being trapped behind the reflector. Something that has happened a couple of times and is a pain in the derriere to fix at sea.
I hope all my measuring works out, but if necessary can always go up the mast and tweak it when afloat - not that I enjoy going aloft!
The final job was to sort out the deck light. Having found out what make of lamp fitting it was I ordered a lamp from Boatlamps that had arrived on the day before I down. It fitted, but was not getting any power. Time to strip the fitting and find out what was going on with 40 year old wiring. As a result I've chopped the wiring and am re soldering the connections to make it easier to fix in the future.
Flag halyards replaced as they were getting rather sun damaged and breaking up.
Just the lazy jacks to sort out.
Updated: 24/02/2025