Of all the things that Beverley and I have discussed over the last few weeks, it is the state of our standing rigging. Despite the rigging being 15 years old, it is in quite good shape, so in my opinion did not need to be done now. However Beverley won the argument when she quite rightly argued that we were planning to own Salty Lass for at least the next 15 years, so knowing that that part of her was in good shape would be a good idea. Also, we both wanted a spinikar at some point in the future and despite having a sheave for one we did not have a mosing line by which to pull it up. More importantly, we needed an anchor light fitting and having no spare line by which we could hoist someone up the mast, the best couse of action, is to bring the mast down and fit the light.
So on an incredibly calm day, the day before the lift out, it was time to remove the sails. Although this is what you need to do to winterise a boat, it felt so sad taking the sails down. The sails are such an important part of Salty Lass, it felt like we were taking part of her sole away, not a nice feeling at all. I think the crew felt the same way, as they had pulled their hats over their faces. We pulled our genoa down, then folded it on the pontoon. The hardest part about folding the sail was to aviod falling of the pontoon, as the sail was right up to the edge of te pontoon. Once the genoa was away it was time to remove the main. The main sail is attached by slugs to the mast, and there is a special slot in the mast that you push in that allows you to remove the slugs.
When you carry out a boat project like removing the mast things are never straight forward, as you need to think about the electrics, so we labeled them all up on both sides of the connection, so that we knew how to wire them back up after we put the mast back on.
The next day was haul out day so we motored to where we can haul out onto the yard. Once we were in position, the mast was removed by the rigger who we were employing to sort out the rigging. It was incredibly scary stuff having the mast removed and it felt so sad. Beverley and I are going to have to work real hard, to get all the jobs done, but we will as we want Salty Lass back in the water as soon as possible.
The next day after haul out, we saw a lot of cracking in the paint on the keel so I touched it and a huge section of paint just came off in my hands. So we might as well add that to the list.
On the mast, the only job that we needed to add was the remval of the TV ariel, something that Beverley and I have agreed that we do not want.
