On Saturday, Cilantro's main
mast was stepped and the standing rigging (shrouds and stays) was set and tuned by Jon Weislogel of
Bittersweet Landing. Yesterday morning (Monday) the mainsail, staysail, and genoa
went on, in short order. Today we expect to launch!
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| Jon and Mikey guide the mast while Curtis holds the staysail and genoa roller furlers. |
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| Jon climbs the mast to release the crane. |
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| Staysail on; no photos of the other (larger) sails going on, because we were too busy being deckhands |
All three sails (even the main) are
roller furling, meaning that they are rolled up onto their foils (or into a long track on the back of the mast, in the case of the main) rather than being lowered and flaked at the end of each sail. The
head of each sail is attached to its halyard (hoisting line) inside the roller furling foil and the luff line (the leading edge of the sail) is fed into the foil as it is hoisted. Furling lines and sheets for the staysail and genoa are run aft to be handled from the cockpit.
There was negligible wind in the
boatyard this morning, so we decided to run the spinnaker up the mast, too. Being a "cruising spinnaker," it is asymmetrical and somewhat smaller than the symmetrical spinnakers you see on racing boats and in many sailboat ads, but it is still a light air sail. We were pleasantly surprised to find our spinnaker has a “dousing sock” or "snuffer," a long, lightweight tube that is hoisted to the masthead along with the
sail and, when pulled down, can collect and "douse" the giant sail very quickly.
But wait, you might be asking, isn't
Cilantro a yawl, and doesn't she have a mizzen mast and sail?
Yes but, along with other outstanding refit items – autopilot,
solar panels, chartplotter – we have plans to put a wind
generator (like a mini windfarm unit) at the top of the mizzen mast, away from sails and
rigging – and our heads. The boat should sail fine without the mizzen, so we decided not to step the mizzen mast until we have our wind generator ready to install.
Launch this morning, with the rising tide...
