[Public-List] FW: Musings....

[Gordon Laco via Public-List]

So, George discovered what I was doing wrong... Here are the rants that
didn¹t get out...

G



------ Forwarded Message
From: Gordon Laco <mainstay at csolve.net>
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2015 13:22:43 -0400
To: Public-List <public-list-bounces at lists.alberg30.org>
Conversation: Musings....
Subject: Musings....

So there we were Friday evening, the Girl and I, enjoying a glass of wine
sitting in the cockpit after supper.  We¹d seen a couple of turtles swim by
and were in hopes of seeing the muskrat we¹d been visited by earlier...

It was blowing about 15kts from the northwest.  The usual slack halyards on
a few (usual) boats were flogging but I noticed something more substantial
rattling.  There to windward of us, at her jetty almost nose to nose with
SURPRISE was our neighbor¹s early 1970¹s S&S IOR boat and that¹s where the
sound was coming from.  The fellow who owns the boat is a nice guy, but very
busy because we usually only see him at launch day and then haul out in the
fall.  One year he didn¹t get his stick up.  I sympathize, because I¹m too
busy to enjoy SURPRISE as I¹d like to myself.

This year the S&S boat had been launched with the rest of the club in the
spring stampede, then left tied abstractly to her jetty with whatever odds
and sods of line came to hand.  Her stern was out nearly in contact with the
next boat, her bow was tight against the dock (picture a rather extreme
beamy boat with tightly pinched ends such as was being built in the early
delirium fibreglass construction caused designers to explode into...²ya mean
I can have Œem build ANY SHAPE I HAPPEN TO DRAW, anything?²)   Her bow was
overhanging the centre walkway of the dock complex causing someone to put
orange hazard tape on it.

I walked over to look.  I saw there was no backstay set up. Nothing.  ALL
the shrouds and of course the forestay were slack and hanging in curves
banging about.  It was the forestay¹s toggle snapping back and forth under
reverse downward loading that had caught my ear. The mast, keel stepped, was
banging about in it¹s partners slowly opening the deck aperture with the
stupid single mindedness of a boat trying to kill itself.

One shouldn¹t touch another person¹s boat, but this was too much.  I could
picture the unsupported mast eventually battering itself to the point where
it folded at the deck and landed on SURPRISE...perhaps with us in the
cockpit sipping wine.

I saw the boom, which was free to bang from side to side but just now off to
starboard by wind force, had a wire topping lift on it, so I jumped aboard
and hauled the mainsheet tight.  That put some load rearwards on the mast
and stopped the banging by holding the mast against the after side of it¹s
partners.  The forestay was now not quite tight but no longer flopping and
metal fatiguing quite so merrily.  I found the backstay still lashed to the
mast from launch day and fixed it to it¹s chainplate on the stern.  I
cranked the turnbuckle right up but it was still slack...and found the same
with the shrouds.  I reckon the mast step of the boat has collapsed dropping
the mast a few inches down into the boat, making all the standing rigging
too long.  I¹m just guessing.

I dug through a cockpit locker and found some lines more appropriate than
the worn tarp lanyards the boat was made fast to her jetty with and set up
two bow lines, a stern line and a spring.  I pulled her back so her bow (and
anchor) were no longer overhanging the wharf and the boat herself was
parallel with her jetty.  A couple of other people joined me as we did what
we could to make things more secure.  We rigged halyards port and starboard
to hold the mast up, then coiled everything down after putting locking turns
on all the cleats.

And now for the rant.   I can understand that the fellow may well love his
boat but is too busy to spend the time he¹d like to with it; but leaving it
in such an unsafe condition and forcing the rest of us around him to bear
the risk is not fair.
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