Staysail Rigged

At the boat again yesterday, after a 2 day break to take care of some other things. I wasn't going to work too hard though. Its becoming painfully obvious that it will take the rest of my lifetime to finish this refit.

I installed the secondary anchor and bow roller. I put on the rode from the main anchor, so I only have 130', but I needed it to be legal, and that is plenty in the Bay of Quinte, where we hope to be sailing soon. I didn't take pictures, but they'll show up when I do the whole ground tackle installation, eventually.

Then I moved on to the staysail. I needed to measure it up for a new deck bag, figure out the length of the pennant that attaches the tack to the deck, and install the reefing ties. I made a pennant out of rope for now, until I can get my buddy Red to throw one together for me. He has the swage tool and stainless wire for making them up. Found out the shackle is too small for attaching to the reef points, so I'll have to get one with a deeper throat. But otherwise it worked well. Set the reef ties, and tried them out a couple of times. The sail is still really stiff, so it doesn't roll the best, but it'll get easier in time.

Full sail.

 Reef #1

 Reef #2

The only other thing I did was to wipe down the interior a little, to get rid of some of the last fiberglass dust, and put the cushions in the main setees. If I ever get all of the other things done that need my attention, I'll be moving onto the boat to get this refit moving a little faster.

The next couple of days I am in the shop, sewing, working on the anchor locker, getting the truck ready for the big family reunion, etc.... I am hoping to get down to the boat next week, but the weather man is telling me bad things, and we have to leave on Thursday. Guess we'll see.

It could be worse, I could still be working and trying to get this done. I amazes me how little time I seem to have, I can't for life of me figure out how I ever managed when I had to give someone else 50 hours of my time every week.

Live each day to the fullest!

Boom Extension

Anyone who has ever sailed a Bayfield 29 with wheel steering can tell you that the mainsheet was designed specifically to throw the helmsman on their butt whenever they make a mistake. If the mainsheet was centered, then it ran right thru the helmsman. It drove me nuts that first two times I sailed the boat, and I knew that their was no way I could live with it.

A neighboring Bayfield says that he just leaves the mainsheet out to either side depending on the tack, which leaves the helmsman free, but he admits that it diminishes sail performance, and has to be moved around when tacking. Other than that, there seems to be only three ways to combat this poor design. One is to add a few inches to the boom so that the sheet is farther aft. It still interferes with the helmsman, but not as bad. Second is to move the mainsheet to the cabin top, with an attachment on either side, basically two mainsheets that control the boom. The third, and probably the best idea, is to convert back to a tiller. They all have their pros and cons. My preference would have been to go to a tiller, and maybe one day that is what will happen, but for now I took what, to my mind, was the simplest and least expensive solution, I extended the boom by 16".

It was hot yesterday too. Temp 29 degC, humidex 34 degC, sun screaming right at me the whole time. After 6 hours in it, I was done. At least I wasn't fibreglassing.

Started by fishing the boom so that I could put the reefing lines, toping lift, and outhaul in. I am not happy with the current set up, but I'll change it later when I figure out what I want. I just wanted to have those lines in the boom because it would be so much easier to fish them through while the end of the boom was missing.

Then I mocked everything up, figured out what I was going to do, and dove in, drilling holes and filling them with bolts or rivets. I had had a fabricator make the extension for me in the spring, out of 1/8" aluminum. Two 16" inserts for the boom, and then a two piece unit that went over them, and then welded before it left the shop. I had looked at the way others had extended their boom, and then used their ideas to come up with a design that I was happy with, and this turned out better than I had expected.

 Here is the inserts. The first 8" slides in the boom, and is riveted on to the sides of the boom in three places. Everything fit so well, that I don't think the rivets are providing any real strength, they just make sure it doesn't slip around.

 Then the tag lines go through the extension, and it goes over top of the two stiffeners.

 With the end cap and rollers riveted on, and the mainsheet attachment bolted, we have boom extension.

 And here it is done. All riveted, and the lines run. It turned out much better than I had originally expected, and that makes me even happier. I still need to figure out how to rig all the lines in a way that I am happy with. I think I may put all the mainsail handling lines to the cockpit, and all the headsail lines to the mast, but no decision has been made yet. I personally like everything at the mast, but the argument for staying in the cockpit during rough weather is wearing on me.

Its hard to see the old attachment point. I left it on there so that if anything structural ever happened to the extension, I could revert back to the original setup really quick. Also makes a good attachment point for preventer, maybe, it is a bit farther aft than I would like. But more importantly, the mainsheet is 16" aft of where it was, and you can tell by the picture what a difference this is going to make.

While I was doing all this stuff yesterday, the mainsail was up, to make it easier. But I noticed that there was a big pucker in my new sail. That would be really bad since I sewed it. I had accidentally left my tack shackle on my old main when I sold it, and the one I put in its place temporarily is a little long, so that seems to be what the problem is. Worse case scenario I have to resew the tack corner after removing some material, but I don't think it is that bad. Releasing a little tension on the main halyard made the pucker go away, so cross fingers, its a simple fix.

Off gallivanting for couple of days, but hope to be back at it by Friday. The way things have been going, I'll be lucky to get the boat out this summer. Ughhh.... I want to sail my boat, damn it!

We're Back...

Well, the house is done, or at least everything that needs to be done before this fall. In fact when I look outside today, I should find little grass seedlings popping out of the topsoil on the last piece of lawn that we seeded. I even cut the grass last night for the first time, at least on the parts where the grass was tall enough. So that means all my focus can now be put to the boat. The problem is that I am having a hard time shifting gears from house to boat.

We did go to the boat for a few hours yesterday though. Finished up the rigging, tightened it up, and bent on the sails. The new sails look nice. The staysail looks a little large, but I'll check that out a little later.

This is an older pic from when we stood up the mast, but never got on the blog. Serena insisted on taking this one so that I wouldn't forget. I spent about an hour pounding on the pin for the backstay before I finally got it to let go. Then I had to take a drill to it to ream out the hole. It was like someone had glued it in, but I think it was just years of crud buildup. The pin was completely mangled and accidentally fell in the drink on purpose.

So yesterday I started out by attaching the rogue backstay. I had to cut the extension to the right size, after all, I only needed an inch. Then installed it. Problem was that the backstay was bent around the pushpit bar. I can tell by the scratches on the bar that it has been like that for a while, but with the extension, it was that much worse. So I had to cut out the bar. I will have to get a new piece, and some fittings, then put it back in. There is no strength in the pushpit without this bar. As far as I can tell, the pushpit has been bent a few times,  and is not longer where it should be. Oh well, into ones life a little rain must fall.

Then I managed to get the rig tightened up using my handy dandy tension gauge. I set the backstay to 750 lbs and the shrouds to 500 lbs. I'll try that out sailing and then adjust as required. It should put about 850 or so on the roller furler foil, but I'm not interested in do the math.

 Our new mainsail. So excited.

 We got the boom attached. But we were missing the shackle that attaches the mainsail to the mast. I think I left it on the old sail, which I sold to another Bayfield owner in our club. I'll have to get that back, or find a replacement. The boom isn't rigged though. We added an extension to it, but it hasn't been properly attached or setup yet. Thursdays job maybe! I think I will have to grease the slides a little, as the sail didn't want to come down on its own. New slides I guess. It went up really smooth though.

Then we put the furling yankee on. Silly me, when I put the sail on, i didn't check how much rope was on the furling drum, and some had come unraveled during storage, so I had to manually feed about 8 turns into the drum so that it had enough length to furl the damn sail. Pain in my, @$$. But we got her up, furler works good.

Then the staysail. This sail seems bigger than I remember, but it measures the same. It hoisted nice, but with the new stiff/heavy fabric, there was no way it was going to fit in the bag, so I will need to make a new bag here, very soon. Maybe this weekend. I also realized that the old staysail had a wire extension from the tack to the deck, to lift it just a foot, and keep it off of the deck. So I need to get one of those made up. Also, the usual way of attaching the sheets won't work, because we need to be able to move them to the reef points. The only thing that bothers me about that is the steel shackle that will be flying around the deck looking for my head. I'll figure something out, I've dealt with the flying shackles before.

So, all that is left is to finish rigging the boom. Install all of the reef ties for the main and staysail. Make a bag for the staysail, add the wire extension for the staysail, and set up the mainsail reefing lines. I will also need to put an anchor on the boat to be legal, and then we can sail. I'll worry about the lazyjacks at a later date. My goal at the moment is to make the boat sailable, then I can move on to liveable.

And here is the before and after pictures of the life ring. I went with the expensive floating rope instead of the crappy poly. It helps having a rope manufacture right here in town. I was tempted to put SS Minnow on the life ring, but not only is that not the name of the boat, but I thought I might be tempting fate a little too much.

Oh well, onward and upward. Today is in the shop working on boat projects, and taking it easy.