If you've got to be away from Boca Chica, Marathon Marina is the place to be! Clean, organized, and fully equipped with all the amenities including a pool!
The day after arrival, Keys Rigging arrived with a crane and laid the mast down in front of the boat.
They measured and stripped the rigging and left me to tinker with it while the new wires were swaged.
I put a new block at the spinnaker bail, pulled the new VHF coax, cleaned and repainted the masthead plate, installed the new anchor light and the fitting for the Garmin wireless wind sensor.
We changed the way the wire channel worked top and bottom after finding a totally inadequate cutout at the bottom for wire exit and a miserable affair at the top requiring wires to loop down to make it to the masthead.
Curt also found a factory defect in the way the masthead was attached to the mast. The two bolts that secured the fitting, interfered with the main halyard and the wire halyard had sawed through a quarter of the three-eighths bolt!
I made a trip to Specialty Hardware in Marathon for a new bolt and a long drill to go through in one pass. What a pleasure to find a real hardware store with staff that knew exactly what I needed, found it quickly and even charged a very fair price! Very recommended!
Assembling the rig and raising the mast was two longish days, but the joy of watching and learning as Curt and Jason Childers assembled and swayed the mast was worth every dime!
The third day Gavin came a board and did the final tuning.
The Harken ESP One furler is simple and simply superb! the new stanchion blocks make the friction in the system extremely low.
This boat has a new lease on life and should be alive and romping long after the we are dead.
On to Lauderdale.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment