The title for this episode comes from "Blown away" and is very accurate, but trust me on this we remain fully dressed through out the episode.
I was at work, so it was up to Beverley to sort out boat tasks and she had a few tasks to do out side. So it was time to put on the mullions, which as our cold weather gear is fairly easy to put on. The only issue that Beverley has is that she has put on a little bit of weight over winter, so she can no longer bend over to put her shoes on. The jobs Beverley needed to do was just fill the tanks with water, so fairly mundane, but it is a job that needs doing on a regular basis. When we fill the water tanks, we always run the water for a few minutes to flush the water systems. In summer it can be particularly bad for organisms breeding and living in the pipes, but flushing the pipes through gets you to cleaner water.
The next day I was off, so Beverley and I looked at all the wee jobs that we had to complete. Some jobs are critical, for example, our radio needs fixing and we have to service the engine before departure. Other jobs like the door are being cut down, so we wanted to make a door, but now we are just going for washboards. Another job that needed going was the goose neck. One of our subscribers who we met in Caernarfon, bought us the goose neck and we have had it for at least four months now, but if is of no use to us just lying around the boat, so we needed to get it on.
Initially we wanted to keep the sail on the boom and just replace the goose neck, but there are no short cuts on a boat, so we had to remove the sail from the boom. This meant that we had to hoist the sail, so we tested out the position of where Beverley had put the stripper arm when she had serviced the winches. When I tried to winch the sail up, I felt like the stripper was not in the right place, so we decided to move it. I have to say, it is a really easy job to move the stripper as all you have to do, is unscrew the main screw, lift the bell housing and the stripper, until the stripper is free. Move the stripper and put it all back. As this was just a small job, we did not use the cardboard box to catch the bits, so of course, the stripper jumped off the boat, luckily the spray hood caught it and although, the stripper went between the spray hood and the boat, it did manage to stay on the boat. Once the stripper was in the right place for us, it was back to taking the sail off, which would of worked a lot better if we has prepared the sail for hoisting rather than having a botched job, in that we had not unzipped the sail bag or unclenched the reefing lines. About the only thin we did do was undo the reefing lines which you only need to do if you are removing the sail.
Once the sail was removed, we quickly removed the old goose neck, then we compared it to the replacement part before fitting the new goose neck. We had to put in a lot of washers to reduce wear and play and that was just of case of trial and error. After we had secured all the components with split pins and ceasing wire where required, we cleaned up the old goose neck for spares and with that our day was done.
