Last year I noticed the leather covering on the main mast hoops was showing signs of wear. Not the usual stitching coming adrift but the leather beginning to split. Given that they were probably made up 28 years ago I can hardly complain and recently decided I needed to get on and get the split ones replaced. In the end 5 of the 6 needed replacing and having established I had nowhere near a big enough piece of hide I bought one from a supplier. Natural not tanned and 3-3.5mm thick, it was ideal.
The rings are about 30cm diameter so each ring would need about a metre by 50mm strip for decent coverage and once it had arrived I began the process of cutting off a strip then marking out the two lines of facing holes for the stitching about 5mm from each edge.
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| Stretching into the distance.. |
It is much easier to pre mark this before you soak the leather and I used a "pricker" to form the holes that will make the actual stitching so much easier. Having made the first pass and made sure the line is straight(ish). I go over the same holes a second time but it requires a mallet to drive the pricker through leather this thick and it all takes time. The pricker doesn't punch a round hole through but an angled slit which enables you get the first stitch through and leave enough room for the second coming from the other side. The needles are not sailmakers needles but narrower with a soft point that rarely snag the thread and a joy to use. The 1mm Ritza thread compliments the needles and being pre-waxed is easy to thread through the eye.
Having soaked the leather overnight I set to, having to work with the rings in situ was made difficult only by the cold weather - it was December.
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| part of the process.. |
The wet leather is roughly formed by hand around the ring and then using two needles at opposite ends of the thread I push one in from either side (one from the left, one from the right), overhand the thread as they pass then insert each needle from the inside to the out so the left needle exits on the right side and the right from the left and haul tight, stretching the leather so it dries tight on the steel. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat... I wasn't particularly in any hurry so the individual marking out was done on one day, soaked overnight and stitched the following day. The whole thing took a couple of easy weeks as somedays standing on a foredeck in rain and wind lacked any sort of appeal. Anyway all five are now done, a couple of coats of tallow applied and I'll replace some of the mizzen ring leather too over the winter.
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| Five completed |
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| Traveller |
The traveller was done at the end of last year, different leather, thicker and bigger spacing between the holes. The white is tallow sat in the indentations of the hide - but we're pretty much good to go.
As part of the checking of gear we'd hauled out our anchor chain to go over the links. Much of it was rusty which we don't fret over too much but a closer look at some of the links showed marked wear - from 10mm down to 8mm. It may not be significant but a rough calculation suggested we were losing more strength than we were happy with and we began to think about replacing. We'd got the chain second hand though with very little use some 10 years ago and it has served us well. But we always felt it to be too short and had gone on to chain and rode but much prefer all chain and punted around for what was out there. In the meantime, while we researched, we dug out the spares we have for the SL500 windlass as we wanted to check the gypsy against our existing one. Turns out to be for an earlier model and didn't fit anyway. But it had 6 "slots" for the chain whereas our existing one had 8. The new 10mm chain fitted the 6 slot gypsy very well whereas the 8 has a bit of slop but takes a 3/8 chain perfectly. Hope that makes sense. You can, if you're so inclined get Dave Webster to make you up a gypsy to fit the chain you use exactly although, understandably, you need to provide a new chain sample with the order before he'll start work.
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| Carbon from the elbow |
The year long break also pushed us into those jobs we know we should do but invariably put off. The engine exhaust elbow was one such. Apparently these very expensive pieces of kit are prone to pinhole damage where the ally is welded to the stainless part. It's a pain to take off but worth it in the end. Although we couldn't really see much damage it had been on for 5 years and the resulting carbon was something to see and having gone to the effort we replaced the elbow keeping the old one as a, cleaned up, spare.
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| Before the clean up |
Apart from Covid, a reason in itself not to wander off for the summer, we've also had the distress of 3 friends die this summer from non Covid issues. The last one was actually Steve, a boat dweller here at the quay. Painful to watch him in his last few weeks; grateful for the kind friends who offered him a room in their house for his last months. Given the restrictions on internal gatherings his send off gathered, fittingly, on the quay where there was enough room for all to be socially distanced yet able to share the moment too. I'll never hear "Into the Mystic" again without having his send off come flooding back....
That rather bald paragraph really doesn't do justice to the amount of energy and effort they have put in to getting this thing off the ground - the days are LONG, particularly the Friday when the meals go out and possibly the most amazing aspect is, to us, that they have no idea what food will be passed onto them, the dietary requirements vary enormously requiring a lot of ingenuity and talent to make this all work. As if this isn't enough all the meals come with a small bunch of flowers, often a poem or note from these two caring people.
One of our regular tasks is to empty our pee bucket and on this particular day it was my job. It's easy enough, tipping the contents over, hosing out the jug and replacing. Not exactly rocket science.... Having sorted it out I carried on with pottering around until nature called again and I sat down to pee (this is a boat after all) and then went back to whatever I was a doing. It must have been about 10 minutes later when I wandered up the companionway and into the cockpit and saw the pee bucket hanging innocently from the tiller where I'd hung it to dry and air several hours previously.....
It took several hours to clean up the mess....
A sign, designed by Bee, is now placed on the cover whenever the bucket is out....it reads "Piss Off"
It will take several years before Bee allows me to forget....
mbt
Millbrook