| Florida,
the sunshine state. Every time I come here it rains. On the
weekend of the 19th of December, we
depart rainy, cold Ohio and head to rainy, warm Stuart. The boat trailers well except for an occasional wobble at speeds above 65, which fortunately dampens itself. We get a meagre 8-9 MPG for the trip, but I suspect we're a lot heavier than the first time I weighed the boat, with the addition of bow pole, screacher, spinnaker, galley, head, and holding tank. The wobble is alleviated when we remove the Honda and put it in the bed of the truck. Here's what the boat looked like 1 year ago, before we left Columbus for the winter:  The new aft mast support works well, but isn't quite tall enough. The problem is that if I make it any taller, the back of the mast is going to be sticking way up in the air for trailering. I think I will take two more poles and attach the roller to them, and then slide the assembly into the existing poles. Then when we get to the ramp I will try to push the entire thing up and pin it in place. Another possibility would be to use a bottle jack, if it's too heavy. Because of the high load on the mast when it's resting on the support, the mast raising pole was bending. I will also fit an extension into that pole so that it reaches all the way to the bow when the mast is up. This will allow me to attach the halyard and the winch strap directly to the pole and not just to each other. Running the spinnaker halyard went fine until I tried to fish the messenger line out of the mast exit. I think the line became twisted with another halyard on the way down, and eventually I pulled it out through the sheave by mistake. Next time I will tie it off until the mast is up and I can put sufficient tension on the other halyards. I might also try to wedge a couple of cable ties inside the mast through the exit hole to capture the line as it drops down. It's probably sufficient to use the screacher halyard since I have an F-31 spinnaker anyway. Retrieving the boat was interesting, in a 15-knot cross wind. I decided to fold one side, motor to the dock, and fold the other side only after the trailer was in the water. I need to record some kind of measurement for how much longer the cap shrouds need to be to fold because as you can see, I gave them too much slack and the entire weight of the mast was being taken up by the temporary stays. Eventually I think I will install some kind of tensioning system so I don't have to deal with adjusting the Precourt deadeyes each time I fold or unfold. |
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