Busy day at the dock for Rebecca
We got a fair amount accomplished on our first day of “we need to get ready to go,” and Rebecca was especially busy. One task that has been on our “list” for some time is fixing the leech cord on our Genoa. What is a leech cord, or rather, what is a leech? The leech on a sail is the rear edge and a leech cord runs the length of it, inside the sail, allowing us to adjust the tension. Without a leech cord the rear edge luffs or flaps in the wind. So, what happened to ours that required fixing? Well, I cut it. 🙁 Yes, on purpose.
More than a month ago, on a failed tack on a gusty day, the leech cord became entangled on the flag halyard hook. As I was pretty certain the sail was going to be damaged from flogging so violently, I made an executive decision and quickly cut it away. Immediately after doing so the still-attached portion of the cord was sucked up inside the sail, just like the drawstring on a pair of PJ pants is sometimes lost into the waistband. Unfortunately, fixing this was a tad more complex than restringing a pair of pants.
We started the repair process by dropping the sail onto the trampoline. A close up inspection showed that the cord hadn’t been drawn up into the sail too far so we simply cut away some of the stitching, retrieved the cord, tied a new length onto it and fed it back down through the sail’s leech. Rebecca then busted out her shiny new sewing machine and repaired the stitching that we had removed. As an experiment we disconnected the boat from shore power during this time to make sure the sewing machine would run properly on the inverter (it does). The sail was repaired good as new and then re-hoisted to the top of the forestay.
After completing a couple of other sewing jobs (mending our main sail cover, altering some clothing) Rebecca moved on to another important task: painting our License number onto our dinghy. This is not at all important for Canada but it needed to be done before we head to the states. Although she told me that she was never very good at “staying inside the lines” while colouring, I think she did a stellar job!
What was I doing while she was doing all this work? Taking photos, of course. 🙂
I conclude that you guys are having too much fun. In every picture you post, Rebecca is grinning!
bob
That is her “stock” photo smile. When she doesn’t smile I just photoshop the pic to make it look like she is. 😉
Great job, Rebecca! I’d be smiling all the time too if we were so close to cruising!
She smiles all the time because she has such a doting husband.
If you took pictures while she did all that work, there must be a LOT more pictures than just thes two! Personally, I think you should have been painting while she was sewing! Next time YOU work and let Rebecca take the pictures! Equality!
Me work and her rest? Never! 🙂