Well nobody expected that! The weather that is, this weekend was forecast to be a typical UK bank holiday weekend, wet, damp and miserable, but as it turned out it was a scorcher on Saturday & Sunday, Monday reverted back to form, “but two out of three aint bad” (wasn’t that a meatloaf song or am i showing my age now?)
Anyhow, because we planned for a crappy weekend we had lined up the jobs i described in a previous blog, namely the new clutches, the traveller and the the new cruising chute furler, all got done because the weather was so great, so we now have 14 new clutches that allow all our sheets, vangs, outhaul, inhaul and numerous halyards to come back to the cockpit, which in short means we don’t have to go out on deck to pull any ropes! they were easy to fit as we stayed with the original Manufacturer (Spinlock) and the original Holes lined up, we had to drill a few more be for the additional clutches, but the whole operation was quite painless.
Even the traveller was reasonably straight forward, although both jobs involved several walks back and forth to the chandler to buy Silicon, blocks (pulleys), shackles, nuts, washers and bolts resulting in quite a hefty bill (10-12 mm 316 stainless steel bolts aint cheap)
The Furler also went well, although it was a bit windy and several times we had the Chute pushing hard against the mast so furled it fairly quickly, also forgot to get any pictures, but i think the video on the previous post shows what it looks like and does.
All these jobs means that next weekend we can sail, the weathers supposed to be really warm, but knowing the UK that can change in an instant!