Stays'l Tracks

Yes...there is a technical aspect of living aboard. It seems as though we are adding, subtracting, or modifying something on the Velvet Sky day. I should be recording the work daily and be taking lots of photos. I haven't really been doing either so there will be a bunch of catching up. I am excited to say...."WE GOT THE MAINSAIL UP YESTERDAY!" Being that Scott and I are the working crew no photos were taken of the process, but we will be getting photos of the sails up.

A Happy Sailor... New jib and Stays'l up and furled
The boom is waiting patiently to hold and carry the new Mainsail

Stays’l tracks...

We made a Stays’l sail handling change. IP Yachts come with a self -tacking boom that takes up a lot of room where we plan to store a dinghy. As part of the re-outfitting of the boat we had Carol Hasse of Port Townsend Sails survey all of our sails. Her staff found that our staysail was rotten. We commissioned them to sew for us a brand new staysail. We took the opportunity to refine the sail handling characteristics and free up deck space where we will store our dinghy. In consultation with Dan from PT Rigging and Hasse from PT sails we decided to install some t-track.

Port Side interior backing plates

Starboard side interior backing plates

T-Track (starboard side)

Cradle for life boat (through bolted with stainless backing plates inside cabin)

In order to do this task we drilled 7 holes into the cabin top on each side, a total of 14 holes (as you can imagine we had to be very mindful of how we sealed the holes as to not allow the rain to trickle into the cabin.). It turns out that one of the holes on each piece of track landed right in the middle of the reinforcement on the inside of the cabin which required us to use a g-10 insert ( G-10 insert is a super super hard piece of fiberglass rod that you glue in to the fiberglass substratet of the cabin roof) You then drill with #7 bit and tap with a quarter 20 tap for the fastener (insert photo). To make sure that you don’t have any leaks clean the stainless steel fastener with acetone to remove oil residue, and coat threads with sika 291 and tighten up. We used acorn nuts on the inside to hold the backing plates. The whole goal of adding the t-track on the deck was allow us to use stand up blocks to lead the sheet lines to the cockpit. The end result is more precise control of the staysail and made a much cleaner and safer foredeck and plenty of room to store our dinghy. In removing the old rigid boom we removed the pivot and replaced it with a solid aluminum pad with two fold down pad-eyes.

Custom design and made by Port Townsend Rigging

We can use that anchor point to hold down the bow of the dinghy and have a rock solid attachment point for our jack-lines (Jack-line explanation to follow).