Mekicevica still on the hard, and no sailing this weekend.
Plenty of maintenance jobs to do, though. Spiky The Tabernacle got painted, because the sea was leaving its mark on the aluminium. I also had to repair the spreader bracket. This is one thing that has been giving me grief since day one. When we bought Mekicevica (than Emily) the spreader bracket was broken and I could not find an exact match. A bit of fiddling with rivets got a Selden bracket to sort of fit, but in the recent blowy conditions the rivets came loose. A radical problem requires radical solutions, so screws thought he mast it was. They may cause a problem with the internal halyards, but I am replacing them by external ones, anyway. The internal ones are now dedicated to the courtesy flag and radar reflector.
Fixed this way the spreaders look like they will take any wind. The angle changed a bit, but so what (I thought). We got the mast up again today, which was easy with the new tabernacle (Spiky in his new coat). I made the long shrouds really tight, and the re-jigged spreaders provided for a nice mast rake... THE WRONG WAY! Yes, that is right, the mast bent forward, rather than back. It seems we have to get the mast down again and correct the angle of the spreaders.
Sailing boats are really complicated... and beautifully so.
Luis
