No First Sail Yet

well, I haven't finished grading yet, but I took off in mid afternoon yesterday to go to the marina. I got there about five PM and should have immediately worked on bending on the sails. Instead, I took a walk and went for dinner. After that, I organized the cabins and otherwise moved back into the boat. The high winds and storms of last weekend didn't seem to have done any damage at all.

Another piece of good news is that I still sleep better on the boat than at home.

But I awoke this morning to significantly higher winds, probably around 15 knots. that didn't interfere with scrubbing,fixing, etc. But it was a problem when it came to bending on the sails. (I wonder why that verb came to mean attaching sails to a boat.) I got the mainsail on OK, although I do need to practice flaking it onto boom, especially since the battens interfere with laying it out neatly.

The jib was another matter. It is a 150% Genoa, which is a fair amount of "canvas" (Dacron, actually), even on a small boat. Since it is on a roller furled, it has to set up right at the beginning of the season. I did manage to get it about 2/3 of the way up when the bolt rope tried to work it's way out of the track. It can be tough to haul it up and feed it into the track at the same time, by oneself. While I was dealing with that, the wind really started whipping the sail around. Fortunately, a neighbor working on his trawler (and a former sailor) came over to help. Together we got the sail back down, and I repacked it in the sail bag until I can try again on a calmer day.

Again, I could have avoided all that by working on it Saturday evening when I got there.

I did get a lot done, though. Now it's time to finish grading tomorrow and Tuesday. Then I'll genuinely have some free time.