Making the Most of a Minimal Budget. Contact me at: skintsailor@yahoo.co.uk or on Twitter: @skintsailor

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Battens

New Battens arrived today for the mainsail. A steal on ebay for a tenner!


The two on the right are the new ones from ebay, the one on the left is the only original batten left in the mainsail. The interesting thing about the original batten is that it changes in thickness along its length, so its stiffer at one end than the other. Very trick and cool. I've not seen that style of batten before, I've only ever seen the flat strips. However I'm sure the flat strips will do fine to get the mainsail running. I'll see if I can find out more about getting original battens at some point in the future.

So all I need to do now is get out to the boat and cut the battens to the right size.

The bad news is this is a busy family weekend so no boat stuff. Sprite 2 will have to wait until the following weekend.

Jim needs a bit of help still. His dinghy has sprung a leak so we'll be working with the epoxy and fibreglass tape a couple of evenings this week. Then we can get out and retrieve his mooring.

Apparently the chap that cut his mooring came up to him and confessed the other day. He cut the mooring rope with his prop and steered Jim's boat to the shore safely.  He's offered to give Jim some chain to restore his mooring as an apology so Jim might end up with a full chain mooring after all. But its another lesson in keeping the mooring chain rather than rope: props can't cut chain that easily!

So the jobs are stacking up a little bit. In order of priority they are:

Epoxy leak on Jim's dinghy
Retrieve Jim's mooring.

Cut & fit battens (and get some sailing done!)
Sand and oil companionway woodwork
Fit wiring for charging circuit (eventually)
Splice new eye into new Main Halyard and fit new rope
Take eye out of old Main Halyard, splice into new topping lift and fit new rope.

That'll be September taken care of then!

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