Today marks one week in the Caribbean, so far it's great. The food is good the beer is cold and the people are friendly and kind. While I was eating breakfast Mike (the owner of Shrimpy's) came over and asked if anyone could help a friend of his put up a new mainsail that afternoon. I said that I'd be happy to help and he said that his friend would be by around 2:00 or so. I had nothing really planned except writing a couple emails and catching up with my blog.
When lunch time came around I decided I was in the mood for pizza since we had been talking about possibly getting everyone together to chip in for a couple pies from the local pizza place. I grabbed some cash and went over the bridge to Pizza Hayo in Sandy Ground (not the best area but usually safe in the day) and ordered a Hawaiian pizza because its my favorite. I took it back over to Shrimpy's and dug in. The pizza was quite good, as I had been told it would be, and I ate about half of it. The other half would be dinner. After lunch I got back online and looked at boats for sale in the area and checked my emails for replies from the crew boards. Alas, no replies yet. By this time it was getting close to 2:00 so I put on some sunscreen so I'd be ready to go.
Mikes friend David arrived right about 2:00 to pick me up. We took his dinghy out to the boat which was anchored in Marigot harbor. The boat was a very well kept Beneteau First 41.7 that he and his wife Jan have been sailing for 20 years. After we got to the boat we discussed the plan for a couple minutes, the wind was up a bit so we needed to make sure we all knew who would be where and doing what. We pulled the sail out of the cabin and got it up on deck below the boom. The boat has bat-cars instead of regular sail slugs so each one has to be attached as you raise the sail up. The wind was blowing around 10kts or so which made the job a bit more of a challenge. After we got the headboard attached to its car (it was the most challenging) we were able to get the thimbles in for the regular sliders and we put the battens in as we went. Originally we wanted to also attach the reefing lines as we put the sail up but the wind made this difficult so it was decided to do it later. Once we got the tack bolt in place we were done with the install and we just had to pull up the lazy jacks and flake the sail into the stack-pack. Unfortunately when I pulled up the starboard lazy jack one of the knots came undone and the line went up into the rig. David and I talked about it for a minute or so and I said that I'd be happy to winch him up the mast if he was game to do it. That way the rogue line could be retrieved and put back together how it should be. Then David got out his bosuns chair and I cranked him up the mast to where the line was. Then he could untangle it and tie the part that came undone back on so the lazy jack would once again do its job. After David safely arrived back on deck I helped get the line threaded back though the ring so it was set up like its friend on the other side of the mast. After both lazy jacks were up we though about gettin the side of the stack pack up into position but then quickly realized that we had tied them down to the boom when we put on the sail ties and that we didn't want to undo them with the wind up. David decided to wait until the next morning when the air was calm to get the stack-pack set up. Now with the work don we went to the cockpit and the 3 of us hung out and talked about sailing and cruising for a bit before it was time to take me back to Shrimpy's so David and Jan could take care of a few other things before dinner.
I had a good time helping David and Jan get their new sail on. There were a couple challenges along the way but none of them insurmountable. I really enjoyed getting to hear a couple of their stories after we got the job done and I do hope to cross paths with them again here in the Caribbean.
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