PREPARING FOR THE STORM!

SHIP'S LOG:

Friday's tasks were oriented round preparing ABISHAG for the Hurricane/Tropical Storm/ Tropical Depression that will be Hanna. First and foremost among those preparations was to get the Mainsail unstuck from its messy furling that has rendered it all but immovable, partially in and partially out of its furling tube enclosure.

Kenny was coming down to help me "fix it." I got down early and began to strip the deck of all things movable or those potentially subject to damage from the winds that may be coming. It will probably be a waste of time, not that it isn't a smart thing to do for an approaching storm, but rather my doing it will probably insure that the Hanna will be more of a tease that a real threat. Conversely though, if I did nothing, you just know she would be seriously nasty. Sigh! So stripping the deck of sails and cushions and lines and Bimini and dodger was begun. This is actually not the bad part, that comes when everything has to be put back in its place. Tearing down is always significantly easier that re-staging.

In the midst of this, a 40ft sailboat, HIGHLAND LIGHT, went by and low and behold, she sported "in-mast furling" for her mainsail. I literally flagged the boat down and got on the horn with the skipper. I explained my situation with my mainsail and he agreed to come over and give a hand once he got his own boat moored. This was marvelous and fortuitous as no other boat at TYC had a similar setup so know one really had any experience dealing with a major screw-up of an in-mast furling system. Now I had an expert, or at least someone who had experienced that same screw-up as me and had solved the problem.

Jan and Gail came on board and I showed them my problem. Having walked around the mast several times, while I applied tension to the outhaul(which drew the mainsail out of the mast) he worked the lines that turned the rod around which the sail was wrapped. It was like doing a root-canal anally, but slowly the mainsail began to emerge. Kenny showed up in the middle of the process and the work seemed, and I do mean (seemed), to be progressing quite well, when Gail remarked, 'You got a tear in your sail. Was it there before?"

I gave a look and found that the sail had torn along the edge of the patch I had just put on the day before. What had happened was that the mainsail was unwrapping along the bottom edge, but the side outer edge, the leech, was under was still wrapped and under a great deal of tension. The new patch was acting like a ruler placed on a sheet of paper and the sail (the paper) was tearing along the edge of the ruler. We had a good part of the sail out of the mast, but the more we pull on the outhaul, to get the sail out of the mast, the more the sail ripped. The sound a sail makes as it rips is hard to describe. If you really want to know what it sounds like, get several $100 bills and tear them length-wise and you get a good approximation.

We took the chance that we had enough of the sail out so that we could lower the whole thing to the deck, pulling the rest out of the mast as we did so . . . . and it actually worked. True, I had a brand new 3-4ft tear in the Mainsail, but at least it was down. I thanked Gail and Jan and they left to secure their own boat against the storm. Kenny and I finished storm-proofing the boat and then I hauled the sail off to the sailmaker's shop.

I was expecting to just drop the sail off(after all it was late on a Friday afternoon and a "major storm" was approaching) and pick it up once the sail was fixed and I had found the money to pay for it. But, having worked in this particular shop for a couple of years and being good friends with the owners, a new patch was sewn in place in about 30 minutes at no cost! It pays to have friends.

One last onerous task remained . . . the dinghy. According to the requirements of the Hurricane plan of TYC, dinghies had to be out of the water, thus I had to move my dinghy. It didn't make a lot of sense to leave it in the path of the storm, so it meant that I had to deflate it, pack it in its carry-bag and haul it away in my car. That sounds a lot easier than the reality.

The dinghy weighs 90lbs devoid of air. I have no idea how much it weighs when it is fully inflated, but it is a lot more than 90lbs.( I find it amazing how much air weighs!) I hauled it up on to the beach, semi-difficult, drained out the accumulated water and opened the five valves to let the air out. Easy. I removed the seat-bench. Very Easy. Next, I had to roll the dinghy up, stern to bow. The dinghy is 10'10" long and about 4'6" wide. Rolling it up meant i got covered with sand. No fun. The best part came when I discovered that the bag into which the dinghy was to fit was 4 feet long. The dinghy, when rolled up was 4"6" long. You can see the problem. Rather than unrolling it and figuring out how to re-roll it to fit the bag, I got as much of it into the bag and, with the help of strapping young man, an option that should be included with every dinghy when purchased by someone of 50 years of age, put it into a dock cart and wheeled it to my car. My little auto was just able to handle the semi-roll dinghy, the oars, the seat, the dock lines and fender, the newly repaired mainsail and me, covered with sand. What a day!!!! And next week, I will have to reverse the entire process, though that will wait until I am absolutely sure "Ike" and "Josephine" will not be paying the area a visit!

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

People keep asking what my plan is. I keep telling them that I really don't have a plan. There are things I would like to do, but God is in charge and right now, I can figure out what God has in mind. The refi looks like a lost cause and it will be really tough to try the trip with my current financial situation. The weather, which was so great for the summer, now seems to be deteriorating in a hurry. I still need to install at least one holding tank and still solve the mystery of the disappearing engine oil. It seems that as soon as i set the date, things have really gotten screwed up. O well, I am sure it will all work out but just how, I have no idea.