The Stick is Up... Kinda...

Put the mast up yesterday, twice. Went well the first time, seated on the keel. The pin was missing on the roller furler, but there was two on the backstay, (one on the boat, on the stay), so no brainer there. Then the lower shrouds wouldn't hook up. The two front ones were too long and the two back ones were too short. Plus, the backstay wouldn't hook up, the "new" one was an inch short, and nothing we did was going to fix that. Oh well, into everyone's life a little rain must fall. So down came the mast.

Changed around the lower shrouds, and there is a long story behind that, but 50/50 chance, and I got it wrong on the first attempt. We spent the next little while trying to figure out a way to lengthen the backstay to no avail. So finally we just put it up without the backstay, so that it would be done and out of peoples way. Rick the guru gave me a couple of pieces of old chainplate that I will fashion into an extension here soon.

The second time up was no problem though, we had practice.

But I am getting ahead of myself. First thing in the morning when we got to the yacht club, I had to fix that little exhaust problem. Put the drain back in and shut off the valve. Then I adjusted the stuffing box so that it just stopped dripping without the shaft moving. Then we took the ol' girl out on the bay to try and get it adjusted properly. 1 - 3 drips per minute is the recommended. It was perfect on the way out of the club, but then the drips went away. So I tinkered, and I tinkered, and I tinkered, and kept tinkering until I just said screw it. I couldn't adjust it so that there were no drips when it was stopped, yet dripped when it was moving. So I set it up so that it wouldn't drip when it didn't move, and any drips that came out while it was moving were a bonus. I kept checking though, and the stuffing box never seemed to get over heated, so this will do for now.

I was talking to someone at the club later about it, and they said that it is very difficult to impossible to set the stuffing box in the Bay of Quinte, because the water is so dirty. Wish I had known that before it went out.

Finally after screwing around for 6 hours, we got our mast up, twice, two other masts for club members, helped move some stuff around, and we were done. Cleaned up our saw horses, tied the boom onto the deck, put mast tape around the mast, which self destructed during the process and put the add-a-room back on the cockpit, before we headed for the Beer store. A long hot day. Sunburns, and heat stroke, isn't that what boating is all about!