From the Quarterdeck — Tony Bullard, Vice-Commodore

FROM THE QUARTERDECK

A Report from Vice Commodore

Tony Bullard

Spring is in the air and with that comes time to finish our boat maintenance and plan ahead our sailing adventures - amongst other things of course as my wife reminds me.  Hopefully we’ll get a break from the rain because we sure have had a lot of that. And hopefully we won’t get the 40 degree heatwaves over summer that others in the world have experienced.

The winter haulage season is coming to an end and we’ll soon see lots of boat-owners down on the yard painting, antifouling and doing all manner of odd jobs that boats require. I’m in the process of making a hard spray dodger for my boat hoping the completed project won’t turn into a dodgy dodger! I’ll update you all on this in an upcoming newsletter when the dodger is completed.

While talking about haulage, I thought I’d regale you with a haulage story of mine. Several years ago I was nearing the end of my winter haulage session on my new boat U Choose. Bas, one of our knowledgeable young members who was working on his boat beside mine, asked me how my boat jobs were going. I replied, “well except I hadn’t got a rigger out yet to check my rigging and that I’d do that later in the year in Westhaven”. There’s never a rush with these sorts of things, I thought.  Bas, being an experienced boat builder, said he’d go up the mast and check it out. I was dead keen for Bas to go up, so up the mast Bas went.

Bas comes down the mast after undertaking a good inspection of the rigging. But he has a somewhat troubled look on his face. Apparently I have some broken strands on my stays and the shackle pin attaching the front inner stay to the mast is cracked in half. “Oh dear” I said, “that doesn’t sound good. Probably a good idea not to go sailing with the rigging in that shape”. Bas, of course, agrees. Anyway, Bas offers to help me replace my rigging and away we go. Over the next week Bas and I replaced it all so it was good as new again. Thanks heaps Bas — your help was very much appreciated.

It's interesting what you find out when you inspect old rigging:

Firstly, the stays were imperial sized which apparently has not been sold for many years. They may have been the original rigging for my boat, which at 40 years old, should have been replaced long ago. No wonder the strands were breaking.

Secondly, funny things happen to clevis pins (in layperson terms these are the things that help connect the stay to the boat) after a long period of time. One was cracked in half and another had pin holes running the whole length of the pin. Not something you’d expect a solid stainless steel rod would do. But maybe a 40 year old one?

And thirdly, how on earth the front stay stayed up when attached to the mast with a broken shackle pin is beyond me. If you have a look in the photo you can see the offending cracked clevis pin and the broken shackle pin. Hopefully none of your boats have got anything like these!

For those of you who have come down to the Club lately, you’ll have noticed the place is getting busier.

Friday night turnouts are increasing as Chateaubriant continue to make mouth-watering meals for us and Kirsty and her bar team provide a wonderful range of liquid refreshments.

Emma and the Social Committee are also back on form creating various social events for the whole membership. So keep an eye on the weekly news for what’s coming up as well as the monthly Sea Talks on a Thursday night.

I hope to see you all down at the club soon. 

Tony