momentum

It's been a month and a half since Hello World showed up from Mexico. During that time, pretty much every evening after work we go straight over to the boat and work on it until bed time. Most weekends we've spent doing boat work. We've turned down a truckload of invites to do fun things with fun people in fun places. This amount of work has clearly been wearing on us. At this point, we go over to the boat and do about an hour's worth of work and spend the rest of the time scratching our heads at projects we should be doing but can't seem to motivate ourselves. I'm worn down and ready to be done with the all-work/no-sail part of boat ownership. We still haven't actually sailed this beautiful boat.

I can't tell y'all how much I want to sail this boat. We put the staysail on last night and I damned near wet myself to see a sail on our sailboat. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I really can. It's quite possible we can sail this weekend, if we can knock off this last punchlist:

• send Christy up the mast to fix the starboard spreader end cap that came loose during the mast step and angle the spreaders correctly


• tune the rig at the dock


• get all the cotter pins in and secured


• pull the boom off so we can run the main outhaul line inside the boom (because we didn't run a messenger line when we pulled it off in Mexico)


• put the boom back on


• hoist the genoa


• unfurl and re-furl the main - we have no idea what the trip on a truck from Mexico did to the furled sail inside


• GO SAILING!

Fisher and I poured Spartite into the hole where the mast goes through the deck (I know there's a salty nautical term for this boat feature but I don't know what it is so I'll just call it mast hole, k?) on Tuesday night. This stuff is supposed to seal said mast hole from water entry and hold the mast in position so it isn't rattling around in the hole chewing up the deck. We made an absolute mess of things, primarily because I screwed around too long before and while doing the pouring. It set up on us before we got half done. Fortunately, I bought the large kit with two cans (actually four - it's a two part compound). So on Wednesday we pulled out the last bit and poured over the previous attempt. This came out way better. The trick? Tape visqueen around the mast partners and get the area sealed off really well. Then just pour gobs of that shit into the hole while it still has liquid properties. You'll make a mess onto the visqueen but it will spread out into all the nooks and crannies it needs to. Then after the spartite has a chance to harden for a couple hours, do your cleanup. It will be in a state where it can be cut to make the pour clean but it will come up off of stuff pretty easily.

Once the spartite cures (three or four days), I'll run a bead of polysulfide over the top of it in case it shrank during curing. Then I'll roll mast boot tape over the whole install mainly to keep UV off of the spartite.






Our sailboat has a sail on it! I can't wait to get out there and try out our stays'l.