Fine weather but still no sail

I was planning to spend two days on the boat the past weekend but a friend’s birthday party lured me away, at least for the Saturday. I was torn as the weather was absolutely amazing and I was very keen to do some sailing. Anyway, I had a nice time at the party and ended up going the following day, on Sunday. I arrived quite late but I managed to do some jobs including patching the mainsail with some repair cloth and a generous amount of 3M 5200, following advice that I read on a website. By the time I left, around 11pm, the glue was still quite sticky so I left the mainsail partially rolled but covered it under a tarpaulin.. Hopefully it will be OK. I did a couple more jobs including some fibreglass reinforcing of the chainplate knee that I had repaired.

My mooring contract is running out on May 31 and I’m not sure exactly what to do. I’m probably not going to sign another annual contract as I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do with the boat and how long I want to keep it at North Fambridge.

The coming weekend is the bank holiday weekend but I’ll have to go to a meeting on the bank holiday. Luckily, I’m allowed to take it on another day. Anyway, I’m going to the boat and planning to do some sailing this time, although the weather forecast predicts rain.

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Sailable

Ting-a-Ling is now sailable. All the starboard side chainplate knees have been repaired, the chainplates attached and the shrouds secured to them. This weekend was fairly easy as I did not have to do much more than just put the pieces together and a bit of glassing. More glassing will be done in the near future in order to make the joints more secure. However, I believe that what I've already done should be OK for sailing in light wind conditions. I'm planning to do a bit of sailing for the next couple of weeks and perhaps some reinforcement work on the chainplates/knees. And later I will probably take the boat out of the water to do the mast/coach roof work and perhaps anti-fouling, checking the seacocks etc.

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Almost there! Where?

The weather forecast for this weekend predicted showers and very low temperatures. But work on Ting-a-Ling had to go on, come rain or come shine. First thing I did was to attach the lower shroud to the now repaired chain-plate. That gave me immense satisfaction as it was the conclusion of my first major repair job. There are a few tasks left for this job but these are mostly cosmetic.

I then had to detach the main shroud in order to repair the chain-plate knee for this main shroud chainplate. This knee was a bit tricky as all my measurements seemed to be inaccurate. This has already resulted in me wasting quite a lot of good quality marine plywood. I ended up using a patchwork of bits of cardboard in make a template of the right shape and size. I know I’m an amateur..

I also had to drill holes in the 6mm stainless steel backing plates - my previous efforts to this had resulted in several broken drill bits. Luckily, a colleague offered to drill the holes as he had better tools than me..and more DIY experience. He did a really good job!

To cut a long story short, I have now done most of the work required for the chainplates and will probably assemble everything next weekend. This means that I will be able to sail in a couple of weeks. Of course, the mast compression issue remains.. but I decided that this is a risk I’m willing to accept for a little while in order to enjoy some sailing.

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