Cassini blog #110 make and mend
Cassini's blog
Simon and Sally, Nigel and Catherine
Sun 31 Mar 2024 16:13
Make and mend… For those of you with an RN connection the term “Make and Mend” will be a familiar concept. For those without, it was historically a weekly time set aside for sailors, away from their regular duties, to make any necessary repairs to their personal kit/uniform using whatever they had to hand. Most sailors were competent with a “housewife” needle and thread repair and knew that their uniforms could not easily be replaced whilst at sea. Here on Cassini we have also been having “Make and Mend” sessions. Before we left the Uk last summer, I had been busy with my trusty sewing machine making seat covers, sunshades, deck awnings, many of our courtesy flags, blackout curtains, hatch covers and such like. Many of these things have survived remarkably well, but our blue ensign and RNSA burgee along with the ARC+ flag had taken a bit of a pounding, out in all weathers, crossing the Atlantic etc. I did a repair to the burgee which just about serves still, but in fact Nigel replaced it anyway when he went home in February. The ARC flag is beyond revival now but Simon and Nigel see it as an Atlantic crossing badge of honour and are rather attached to its fraying state, so no repair needed there, but the blue ensign needed some work! I tried a couple of times to repair it, but it never lasted very long. What I really needed was a piece of navy blue fabric to patch the corner with where it had disintegrated….. unfortunately my bag of scraps didn’t have anything in that shade. Undeterred I hunted around in the rag bag and lo and behold, an old pair of Nigel’s underpants in exactly the right shade of blue. A bit of work with a needle and thread, et voila, a secure repair that should last a good while now……….. and a smile everytime I see the pants in the corner of the ensign!! Yesterday we suffered another breakage when one of deck awnings ripped in a particularly fierce wind gust. Initially we thought it was game over for that side of the awning, but with some hefty nylon webbing, whipping thread and Simons trusty “Speedy Stitcher” (a gadget that replicates by hand the action of a sewing Machine to catch the under thread for a stronger stitch), he and I have made what I hope is a workable repair. Time will tell. Sally     Sent from my iPad |