There are a lot of ropes on a boat, and sailboats have more than powerboats. This small black one is called a downhaul. It rides up the jib when we raise it and when we want to lower it we pull on this line and it pulls the sail down. Except on Escape Velocity it hasn’t worked so well. The line is hard and twisted and gets hung up in the blocks and invariably one of us has to go forward to pull the sail down. That’s not so bad in good weather, but you don’t want to be on the foredeck in a blow.
Our friend Alan suggested we wash it to get the salt out of it, then untwist it. I soaked it in a bucket for the afternoon. Yuck.
Then I laid it out on deck and untwisted it from front to back several times.
After it dried it was nice and soft and untwisted again, so we’ll see if it does its job when we head out.
While the line was soaking I worked on the new jib cover. It’s a lot of canvas to muscle under the needle. I’d love to get it done, but we need to do some modifications on the jib lazy jacks before I finalize the design of the cover.
This morning I was up at 4 am to listen to the Australian Open final on my iPhone app. This is the third day in a row I got up early for tennis matches. Later we went to the farmers market.
On our way back the jitney driver pulled over and asked us it we wanted a lift. It was only two blocks but we jumped on anyway for a free ride back to the marina.
Looks like a bucket of black water snakes! Good thought for a horror film SFX
Yeah, I had a similar thought, though I saw eels! I hope the line works as it is supposed to now.