Finally sailing

Sewing the Bimini

Tuesday was a hell of a day. In the morning I found out that the manager responsible for Salty Ginger was already on vacation. Another manager called me and said that the “canvas guy” will come on Wednesday and hopefully will have the Bimini ready on Friday the 12th. Ugh. But given the 4th of July holidays that’s not surprising.

I found an old tent left on the boat by the previous owners and decided that now was its fate to be repurposed as a Bimini. It was more than large enough for the task, so I developed a plan of the minimal sewing effort required to get something functional. I don’t need pretty. I just need a sun and rain cover for the cockpit. 

I wrapped the canvas around the front bar and used duct tape to approximate the curvature. That is the only bar that can be disassembled so that the canvas can be slipped around it. The other 2 bars cannot be disassembled and require sewing some form of attachments to secure the canvas. I set up the sewing machine and started to sew. The machine was skipping stitches. I read the manual, tried everything they recommended, but it would not cooperate. I finally moved inside the cabin and watched a YouTube video that explained the adjustment I had to do. Finally it started working. Still not perfectly, but good enough.

Then all of a sudden the machine stopped working. After examining it, I saw that the bracket that secures the feed height was broken and then the part that moves the bobbin also snapped off. That was it. I tried a few stitches by hand, but realized that it won’t get me far. It was just past 5pm. I rushed to the office to find that the office was still attended and the courtesy car was available. 45 minutes later I was walking down the dock with a $100 sewing machine and set it up in the cockpit since it wasn’t that hot anymore. And the sunset was pretty.

Although my approach to securing the Bimini to the middle bar worked, I really hated the look of so many dangling strings, so I knew I will redo that. The snaps that I attached to the back of the Bimini seemed to be a good approach. At 11pm I was super tired. All the snaps were sewn into place, so only the final fit was needed.

In the morning I tried the thing on. It kind of fit, but looked rather ugly: the sides on the front were sagging way too much, the strings hanging in the middle were awful and the snaps could not tighten the back.

It was functional, but I was also concerned that if it flapped too much, it won’t survive the 2 weeks. Therefore, I went back to duct tape to modify the shape of the front sides, approximated better position of the snaps on the back and decided that I can lace the middle. Oh, and the hook for the light was missing.

Tim, the “canvas guy” was not Swiss punctual: I expected him at 9, he showed up at 11. Right as I was sewing the last snaps into their new position. To make the matters more frustrating, the wind picked up, so he said that it may be impossible to create a template today. WHAT? It was such a quiet morning, why did he blew the opportunity? “Something came up.” Grr.

The crew is back

Just then I heard Sasha’s voice! He was back with his wife Julia. We brought their things onboard, stowed away the food that they brought and went to get lunch and a switch that is broken in a light. On the dock we saw Tim, who said that the wind cooperated, the template was complete and he is relatively confident that he will have it done next Friday. Now the options are: ship it to Sasha who will fly to Halifax or have David and Alla do a detour on their drive from Vermont to Lunenburg. When I installed the on-the-boat-made Bimini, it fit alright, so either option of getting the professionally made one will be fine.

Sailing away

We didn’t have any other reasons to linger in the marina, so we talked through leaving the dock in the wind that was on the nose, but also pushing us against the dock. The initial plan was to try to push the bow away, but that failed, so ultimately the stern had to come out, which was a bit precarious given the huge catamaran behind us.

Our two options were to sail south to Cape Porpoise or east “somewhere”. When we left the harbour, we looked at the wind, considered the tides and pointed the bow east. The new jib seemed to be working very well. At least we could get all telltales to fly horizontal. Maybe it was spilling a bit of wind at the very top, but that’s a tiny fraction of the sail’s area.

King Neptune decided to take a break, so we knew we needed a bigger foresail for the beam reach. As soon as I brought the spinnaker to the mast, the wind picked up. Ok, we’ll wait. The wind shifted a bit forward, so I started to rig the code-0. By the time I was done, we were sailing some 3 knots, so after all maybe the biggest foresail would work fine. And it did. With the spinnaker set we accelerated to 5 and then to a steady 7+ knots. The waves were very mild, almost like lake sailing. And we still didn’t know where we would stop for the night.

Seguin island is quite small. Its only attraction is the lighthouse, to which a wooden tramway leads from the boat house. The cove on the north seemed to be adequate for protection from the southerly winds, so we headed there. All 5 mooring balls were free (it’s illegal to anchor here because of electrical cables), so we took the outer one to ensure that we had room to swing regardless of how we get spun by the wind.

It was a lot more bumpy than I expected, but tolerable. Julia found it hard to work in the galley, but then she also got kind of used to the motion. She and Sasha chopped a salad, we grilled burger patties and enjoyed the dinner in the cockpit.

At 10pm I was exhausted. It’s the earliest I went to bed in the last week and I fell asleep right away. The waves rocked us the entire night. It felt like being in a crib, lulled by a giant hand.