More Sail Cover

Sunday is Sail Cover day.

We have the two halves of the main section together now. Next weekend will be the mast section. Did I mention this is a really big sail cover...?

Patterning the second half.

Isi provides moral support. And the boardroom table proves very handy...

We stitched the two halves and then double stitched 50mm webbing down the length.
This greatly strengthens the seam (since you tend to always pull on it) and also
improves rub resistance along the top of the cover.

Sail Cover

With the crap weather we headed over to my work and started patterning and cutting out for the new mainsail cover we are making. It's a big cover. We are making a few minor changes to the design to fix some shortcomings in the original design, but for the most part we can take the patterns off the existing panels. This is going to take a few weekends...

Big covers. This is the port side boom section. The old cover is well
and truly at the end of it's life.

"What are you doing, James?!". "No idea."

Hot-knifing to cut the olefin fabric.
Seals the edges so they wont fray.

Intermission

Haven't posted for a while. This is because I haven't done jack on the boat.

The weather sucks. Really. Really. Sucks.

I saw today that forecasters reckon this weekend will be some of the warmest winter days on record for NZ. "Woohoo!", I thought. Then I noticed that those record temperatures are to be accompanied by pouring rain and howling gales. Just can't win.

It gets me down, not making progress, but my sagely wife pointed out that I get cranky over "lack of progress" every winter, and I should just treat it as a rum-filled intermission. Wise words.

A Perfect Day For It

Another stunning day. What would any normal person do on a beautiful day like this? That's right, they'd spend it stripping paint.

The bulwarks are teak (like everything else), so really don't know why they painted them. We are going to strip, sand, and leave natural, then varnish the capping rail.

Fantastic day, but bloody cold this morning. First time we've ever had ice on the dock.

Pretend sailing...

Must. Do. Boat. Job...

Haven't really been up to a lot on the boat for the last few weeks, too much work, too much cognac...

Today I decided something had to be done (helped by the fact it was a fantastic day), so I pulled all the starboard stanchions and fittings off in preparation for sanding the bulwarks down, varnishing the capping rail, sorting out some fasteners on the jib track that are bleeding bronze oxide, yadda yadda. More boat, less cognac, that's the plan.

Streamlined for racing...