August 14-18
Michael and Banks came to get us to bring us home so we could check on things and ready the house for Erin. She was not supposed to do any damage but better to be prepared. We cleared the pool area and the deck and brought the motor boat ashore. After finishing these tasks, David started worrying about Josie and decided to drive back to check on lines with the high tides. Michael, Banks and I stayed with the house.
We were glad to see Erin take her turn eastward. We had some high tides with the new moon and the storm but no water in the yard. It just reached the bottom of the dock a couple of times. There was a little wind but nothing serious. No tree falls.
Josie likewise did well and David returned. Michael and Banks had a good weather window for their trip north. We spent the weekend on home maintenance, cleaning, grass, weeding and blackberry pruning. We were ready to get back to the boat and returned on Sunday.
Our next boatwork appointment was on Monday with rigging. Stephen and Amber arrived on time and quickly got to work. Amber was at the top of our mast in no time. Stephen was snapping pictures around the deck. Amber noted a loose shackle on our jib halyard. She could not fix it from the top so when she came down, we pulled out the genoa and lowered it. It was then that we noted that our furling foil was bent and causing damage to the sail. There was a tear in the luff tape that goes along the front of the sail into the track. There was also some wear on the sail where it was furling against the bent part.
We do not know how this happened. Stephen mentioned that it may have happened when they removed the mast last year. He then retracted that thought. We would not have noted it without lowering the sail. This was unexpected. We felt we needed to fix the foil as to avoid further damage to the sail, and of course fix the sail.
From rigging, we had asked for an inspection, and estimates for two upgrades. One was to make our traveler easier to adjust under load. Right now it does not have pulleys, just track cars so when load is against it, it becomes too tight to move. We had also asked for an estimate for a whisker pole. This is a pole that attaches to the mast and then attaches to the back or clew of the genoa to hold the outer edge out. This might help our genoa flapping issue on more downwind sails. Now we needed a third estimate to repair or replace our furling foil.
We were very discouraged by the new problem. We focused on finding a sailmaker to repair the sail and contacted Quantam sails. They were very nice and we had the choice to bring our sail to Annapolis or to leave it in a Dropbox here for pick up sometime. We opted for a trip to Annapolis.
We dropped the sail off, walked around the harbor and had some ice cream. Ended up waiting out rush hour traffic with some wings at Davis Pub in Eastport. On the way home, we learned that our new anchor chain had arrived. Tomorrow’s project had declared itself.