So much to do
The sailing season is approaching, but for now it’s the perfect time for pottering…
Thank you to all the kind PBO readers who’ve sent good wishes and encouragement since my accident. Looking at me now, you’d never know I’d been hit by a yacht (PBO, October 2023), except that I keep having to stop for rests, and, my walk has a nautical roll.
The stamina will build up as the month goes on. So much to do, as the sailing season comes closer! –and not really the weather to do it in, for while you folk on the south coast are casting aside your ganseys and heading purposefully marinawards in the warm sunshine, late spring in Shetland can be cold, damp and windy, to say nothing of the odd snowshower. It doesn’t matter so much for slapping antifouling on–you just start on the lee side, and hope it’s stopped by the time you need to move round–but it’s not so handy when you’re trying to do all the general maintenance that makes the boat look like a trim craft that’s ready to sail.
I went down one afternoon to see what I could get started on. It was a fine, bright, breezy day, but nowhere near 10° which put paid to anything that needed to set, dry or cure. The wobbly front cleat that needs to be re-bedded will have to wait for a warm, flat-calm summer day. All her wooden trim could do with its annual application of Woodskin, but it’ll have to wait till we get several dry days beforehand and no evening dew. A bonny, flat-calm summer day would be ideal. The window frames are an extra problem: they’ve rotted behind. I tried taking the worst side off two summers ago and discovered that the nuts holding the frames on are accessible from the cabin except for two, which are half-covered by the fixings of the substantial grab bar across the middle of each side window. The grab bar is firmly fixed too, with the nuts on the outside of the cabin –under the window frames. Catch 22. The best I can do is fill the space with mastic (bonny, flat-calm, etc).
My to-do-now list was shortening by the minute, which was just as well, because my feet were beginning to feel numb despite my seaboot socks. Winches: flat-calm spring day. In fact, when it came down to it, all I could really do between now and mast-up was tighten the guard rails with new lashings, bring a bucket of hot soapy water down to clean the cabin, and scrub the decks to make sure there was no slippery green underfoot on mast-up day. It’s amazing how sploshing a hose-full of water everywhere raises the spirits.
Masts are allowed from All Fools’ Day. I’m planning to get mine up as soon as possible, even if it snows on us as it did last year. I know fit-out is going to be much slower than usual; I can only do so much at a time, and I need to get my sea-balance back. Just tightening the stays will take several afternoons.
Complications
It will also take time to remember how things fit together: the system of pulleys that makes up my kicker, for example, is so complicated that I consult the diagram every time, and even then there’s always one block that doesn’t look right. My lazyjacks were definitely different last year from the year before. Sorting out the halyards can easily take a whole day, by the time they’re tightened and frapped and the excess is coiled in a beautiful figure-ofeight in the mast bag. Then there’s checking all the slab reefing lines run smoothly round the correct deck pulleys, and that the Cunningham doesn’t have a twist in it–and even with all that gentle pottering, I’ll need at least two goes of hoisting the sail in a light southerly to make sure all’s smooth before I risk taking her out. It’s grand, too, to have time to stop and chat with fellow marina users, or sit in the cockpit with a cup of white drinking chocolate, enjoying the sight of the boom above and the mast rising skywards again, and contemplating what needs to be tinkered with next.
It will be chaos below while I sort all the deck stuff out, but for once I don’t care. Once she’s ready for sea, I can put all the spares back in their ice-cream tub, bring down her cushions and books for the shelf, fill up the water tank and biscuit barrel, and we’ll both be all set to go sailing again.
‘Looking at me now, you’d never know I’d been hit by a yacht’