Boyd Town
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1800 Position: 37 05.94 S 149 52.84
E Today has been a full day but I am relieved to able to say that it has been uneventful. This morning after breakfast I got the dinghy in the water and then attended to the mainsail problem. I removed all the batten cars from their track on the mast, which is a rather time consuming and fiddly job, transferring the cars onto their plastic holders without losing any Terlon ball bearings. I am glad to say I only lost a few. Once the headboard car was off I was able to dismantle it and try to work out the problem. There was nothing obvious so I inverted the two cars to change the load pattern, cleaned up a couple of rough spots which were probably caused by me when I tried to dislodge the car with a hammer - not exactly a gentle instrument - then replaced the ball bearings, adding all the spare bearings that I had in my batten car maintenance kit. Eventually I managed to get the cars working in a satisfactory manner, though not as good as I would like. I fiddled around with a couple of other cars and then once I thought I had done as much as I could to reduce the risk of another jam, I reinstalled all the cars on the mast track. We won't really know how successful my efforts have been until we next set the main. Fingers crossed! After lunch I rowed ashore for supplies then once back on board I let go the mooring and motored across the bay to anchor off Boyd Town. A gale warning has been issued for tomorrow, the worst of it from the west and SW. Over on this side of the bay we should get good protection in the lee of the beach and in the worst case will have plenty of room to drag anchor. So tomorrow will be a day of sitting at anchor waiting for the gale to pass. The wind should ease considerably by Sunday afternoon and if it does then I will aim to continue north on Sunday or Monday. All is well. |