Skint Sailor Sail Loft

I stitched up my jib sail today.

I practised first on my spare dinghy sail which went well, then went for it on the jib. And the sewing machine didn't want to work. It seems it was man enough to push a needle through two layers of Dacron, but not through three. The machine kept stalling. So I went old-school and manually turned the sewing machine pulley for the whole length of the jib sail. I think my arm might ache in the morning! Needless to say I didn't stitch the UV strip on, as the sewing machine had a tough enough time stitching just the sail.

The edge of the sail was in a sorry state. It had come away from the sail for almost all the length of the sail, plus the thin rope had pulled out.

So with the use of a pen, I threaded the rope back through the portion of the edge tape still attached.

Then it was two and a half hours of graft turning that pulley running a zig-zag stitch up the length of the sail. There was one small tear that got double stitched to make sure it didn't grow.

So that's the jib sorted ready for the weekend. Hopefully after sorting Jim's furling system and scrubbing the growth off the bottom of Sprite, I may get a proper sail in. I'm hoping to get a day's worth of sailing done on Sunday. The tide is high around 9 in the morning and 10 at night. Hopefully I can slip out on the ebb in the morning and be back on the incoming tide around 8, while there's still light.

All weather dependent of course. Currently the forecast is for the rubbish weather to clear up by the weekend, with wind in the region of f2-f3. Ideal.

I may even sleep over on the boat on Saturday night. I've not slept on it for a while.