While out shopping yesterday we had stopped by West Marine to pick up some new cordage (double-braided nylon, my favorite :) Just a few short snippets to replace a few short lines on the boat. One of the more problematic items was the rudder lanyard. The old line was so worn that it would not properly set in the jam cleat (holding up the rudder when in the slip; sorry, I didn't take a picture of this so it might be hard to explain). I think that old lanyard was also too thin for the cleat. I used 5/16 line to replace it and this now provides sufficient leverage to allow me to lift up the entire rudder out of the water. In addition, we replaced the tiller tamer line (holds the tiller in place when in the slip) and the boom vang line. Everything now matches and looks really nice—much nicer than that old graying, degenerating stuff that was there before.
After all that "cutting and splicing" (2 hrs worth), we went out sailing. There was supposed to be no wind (NOAA forecasted 3-7 mph wind). So I had prepared the asymmetric spinnaker to see if we could get a hang of hoisting and sailing that large piece of fabric. However, the latter half of the cold front brought with it some more wind. Yesterday it was blowing 15-20 mph (Beaufort force 4-5), gusting to 30 (force 7) so we decided to go shopping instead. Today, it climbed from 5 mph (variable at 14:00) to about 10 mph (3 Beaufort), gusting to 16-20 mph (4-5 Beaufort) by 16:00 when we decided to head in. We never did get the spinnaker hoisted, but we had an excellent Easter's day sailing nonetheless. You can see the spinnaker bag on the bow in the video clip.
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