Mast Lowering Preparations

The current trend appears to be that my blogs wouldn't be complete without a picture of the latest piece of canvas work. 

So here is one showing last week's piece of the 'transition to beige' "jigsaw puzzle"... a new cover for the wheel.

I've also spent some time working on our boarding steps for the pulpit.  When Mediterranean mooring yachts normally reverse into their moorings with the transom facing the quay.  That means that anyone walking past the yacht can most likely see directly into the saloon, so stern-to mooring doesn't seem to be very private.  Also, BV has a long fin keel and skeg which means that she can be a little awkward to manoeuvre in reverse, especially if there is a strong cross-wind.  Finally, quite a few of the mooring that I have used in Greece and Croatia actually have enough underwater rocks close to the quay to lead one to worry a little about the clearances for the rudder.  A damaged rudder would definitely be an inconvenience!  Add all of those factors together and there is a compelling argument for having the option to moor bows-to the quay, hence we have dug out the pulpit boarding ladder.  The previous owners had the ladder made but we have subsequently fitted a larger anchor and so the ladder no longer fitted properly.  The step in the middle had a support arm on it and that didn't fit past the anchor, nor was it long enough.  A bit of judicious hacksawing, filing and insertion of extension pieces has ended up with a removable and correctly sized support arm.  I now need to drill and rivet the extension into place and fit a lanyard so that it doesn't get lost overboard when fitting the ladder into position.

Buckler's Hard

The weather was glorious over the weekend so we had friends over and pottered about in the Solent.  We spent a very nice evening at Buckler's Hard where many of Lord Nelson's ships were made.  It's a great spot; peaceful, beautiful and with a really nice pub that has great garden for when the sun is shining and a roaring open fire for colder winter evenings.  Sailing to places like this is great!  A nice taster of future travels....

However, after two days of great company, good sailing and cloudless skies, we dropped off our friends, stopped dreaming of our new life, and turned our attention to the hard work of preparing BV for her mast to be lowered.

All of the sails needed to be removed.  Control lines and halyards also had to be pulled back, coiled and secured to the base of the mast.  With the weight off the boom, the rod kicker could be removed followed by the whole boom.  After several hours of work we had most of the upper deck prepared...

... so we turned our attentions to the 'wiring spaghetti' coming out of the base of the mast and through the deck.  Radio aerial coax, TV cables, lighting and radar control cables were all carefully marked up and disconnected.  I also took several close-up photos to try to make putting it all back together as painless as possible.

We've taken sails off, tinkered with wiring, and nearly all of the bits and pieces we took apart and removed several times in the past.  However, taking everything off at once seems a bit drastic.  I guess everyone feels the same the first time they have to get a mast ready to be lowered.

After what seemed an age, we finally were able to settled down in the cockpit for some well deserved glasses of wine.  It was quite strange without the boom in place; much more open.  

So the next phase will be to work with the shore team to crane off the mast so that it can be worked on.