Sails up!

Well after Wayne got up from his nap in the evening, we put our Yankee up. Twice…  After we got it 3/4s up, the charter boat next to us called out… Excuse me? I’m not sure but is that the right sail? Huh? I looked at Wayne. Yes, it’s the right sail… No I mean is it right? He was pointing at it… Something really didn’t look right and it didn’t strike me as right when we were putting it up but I didn’t stop to think about it.  Here’s the end. Hook it and start feeding it into the furler and haul it up…

He was right. It was wrong. We were hoisting the sail up the wrong way… it was upside down. Oops! How embarrassing! We hauled it back down and hooked it up again. This time we got it right! Laughing. In all our years, we’ve never done that. A charter boat next to us told us we were doing it wrong (giggling). Good thing I don’t blush or I’d have been blushing. We had a good laugh over that and I yelled over to them that we owe them a beer.  

We chatted a bit with them this morning while working on the staysail. They’re a nice couple - Silke and Dirk from Germany. I told them how we used to charter here and told Silke to watch it – pretty soon they’d be getting a sailboat too… laughing. 

After getting the staysail up we headed over to Speedy’s to pick up our batten. Doyle Sail was sending it to us from Tortola. We got there at a few minutes before 11am. The 11am ferry got there at 11:15 but it wasn’t on the ferry. We were told it was already in the office and that it came in on the 9 or 9:30am ferry. Wow! What service. If we have to have our main replaced this year, then I’m thinking we may take a look at them. After picking it up and walking back to the marina it was a bit warm out so we’re chilling below until the hotter part of the day disappears before putting up the mainsail. Which reminds me, I was going to see what I could find in the line of salads around here.  One of the boats at the end of the dock asked us if we’d like some fish. I guess they have about 8 pounds of red snapper.  Mmmmm love red snapper! Now if I could find a nice salad or makings to go with it I’m in heaven…

It seems so ludicrous that you can’t find good produce in the islands. Most is imported from California or Canada. I couldn’t find any decent produce but managed to get some romaine (not very crisp looking), roma tomatoes, and some bitter tasting carrots. Soooo we have salad stuff to make with the Red Snapper. I cut up a salad and put it in the fridge for later. After the heat went down a bit we worked on putting the battens in the mainsail and putting the mainsail up. Found two caps in the slot where the new batten goes. After we got those out the batten went in a little easier. I swear we’ve had so many problems putting the sails up this season. It felt like we’d never done it before.  After running the sheets to the back we found they were winding around things they shouldn’t and had to remove them and rerun them to the cockpit. They were weaving in and out of the lazy jacks (the lines that hold the sail in place when we drop the sail). We had to redo the reefing lines a couple of times too. They also were going places they shouldn’t, and then we missed a couple of blocks and had to redo our lines again. Good thing that Dirk and Silke weren’t here to see this (they’d left to take the boat back to Tortola)! They’d never believe that we normally do this with no problem (laughing).

Sails all on and Sailcover on...uhm correctly...

After we finished with the mainsail it was time for the sail cover. It also wanted to fight us but I got it on. I discovered that it probably would have been easier to put the cover on, had I lashed the sail to the boom first (looking around for Dirk and Silke) I was hot and didn’t feel much like cooking. It was going to be bologna sandwiches or pizza after Wayne had a beer and cooled down. I wasn’t in the mood for cooking then cleaning up the galley. He opted for pizza (good choice). So we walked over to the restaurant for pizza and beer/pop and were treated to Fox News on the TV while we ate our pizza.  Last time we got to watch CNN so it seemed like they switch back and forth which is okay with me.