Check! Check! Check!

That's the sound of us checking a bunch of tasks off our to-do list for MerSea! Sail slugs sewn. Check! Lazy jacks. Check! Reefing lines integrated & used. Check! Nightsailing. Check! Using the lifelines while underway. Check! Staying calm in a fairly stressful situation. Check! -Okay, that wasn't actually on the list but it's probably the biggest accomplishment of this last week & one that we're both pretty proud of.

So I'll go through the events of last Thursday/Friday on MerSea. But I'll also dabble some sailing vocabulary in amongst the tale -as promised. However, I'm only going to go through 3 words on this week's post because I think it's a small enough amount of words for non-sailors to remember & small enough amount of words for those who are sailors not to be bored by.

Let's begin.

We got to the boat later than we wanted to Thursday afternoon but Matt was ready to go up the mast & finish our lazy jack system.

1. Lazy jack - Apparantly this cat's name is Jack & he doesn't like to do much.

Photo by Rido Alwarno on Pexels.com

Nah, this is really what a lazy jack is or lazy jacks are: They are attached to the mast & the boom making a triangle that helps keep the mainsail from not flapping all over the place when lowering it. -This is not a webster's dictionary definition. -It's all mine! And if that was a poor explanation, just look it up online.

Here's the photo shoot of Matt installing the lazy jacks. Wish I got a better photo when he was finished but we had to get out of the slip & under the bridge so we could sail & anchor by the wharf that evening. If you enlarge the photos by A LOT, you can see a commercial airline flying by in one of them!

Matt on the mast!

Diagram of what lazy jacks help with.

Matt finished his work & all of a sudden it was 5 pm & we had to get under the bridge. So we rushed through our leaving dock procedure. -Which isn't something I like to do when lots of dollars could be at stake. And what happened? We forgot to open the engine cock. Thankfully we figured out this early when smoke appeared from the back of the boat. Also thankfully we noticed the noise the tabernacle made when lowering the mast. -As we had forgotten to unattach some side rigging that keeps the mast from moving. Yes, this is a great thing in pretty much all of the time except for when we go under the bridge. I give applause to MerSea for pivoting on a dime.

After making it out of the north harbor without a scratch, we motored out by the wharf. The perfect anchor spot was beckoning us. Unfortunately our boat was beckoning a ton of kelp. The kelp got caught on something underneath our boat & we were both afraid that might be our propeller. Finding where we wanted to anchor but ended up getting into some kelp. We thought it might be around our propeller but thankfully it was just around our rudder. How did we find this out? Matt jumped in the freezing, cold water & got it away from our boat. Thankfully, I didn't spot this jellyfish until afterwards.

We made dinner & setttled into the v-berth until morning.

Waking up at 2:30 AM wasn't that fun. Is it ever? I guess it would be if we were going to a new destination. It was just going to be back to our slip at the harbor. Why were we getting up at this time? Well, the tide was going to be low enough at 3 AM to get under the bridge. Plus, we wanted to get a practice in of night sailing. If you recall the last time we did this, there wasn't any wind. This time there was a teeny tiny bit.

Oh, as I mentioned at the beginning, I got the mainsail slugs sewn on it. -Resulting in Matt attaching it back on the mast. Hooray! Let's raise the mast then at this early hour. The sail slid up the mast pretty nicely until the last little bit. So Matt used his hulk-like strength & got the sail all the way up! Yahoo! -That's what I was thinking until Matt made unhappy noises & words. There was an override on the winch with the main halyard! Ugh! Ugh! ^&$%%!!##(*&(^$#$@#$! How do I exlain an override? As you can guess, it's not good. The main halyard was stuck. A simple explanation is that the line that raises & lowers the mainsail could no longer function. Two of the wraps around the winch pinned down the line underneath which needs to be free. It's so tight that it's nearly impossible to move anything at all. Luckily, I remembered that this happened a while back on La Vagabonde. -One of the sailing couples we watch. I couldn't find the exact video but was able to find someone else explaining how to get out of this jam.

It's a little hard to see but in the photos below, you might notice that there is an extra line tied to the middle of the halyard line between where it is attached to the winch & the cleat that the line goes through. That extra line is then attached to the winch on the other side of the boat & it is cranked beyond human strength to pull the halyard enought for Matt to put our emergency tiller underneath one of the wraps to allow for some give in the stuck line. -After several tries he slowly was able to get the halyard unstuck & get the line off of the winch completely. What an insane relief! We were really worried for a while that we were either going to have to cut the line -which is really expensive, or take off the winch. So lucky that we didn't have to do either!

You know what though? The biggest accomplishment in that ?!&*%$$#$%9! kind of situation was that we remained calm. Neither of us felt calm inside but I guess instinctually our minds decided that freaking out was any kind of help in this. So great to know that we can react in the best way possible during a stressful time on our boat.

After all that commotion, I was ready to just call it a day & go back to our slip & sleep. Matt though, not being such a baby about things, thought we should really just go ahead & get a few more things taken off of our list. -Thanks Babe! Shame on me for thinking of going in. I did come to my senses & agreed. So we did sail! -At 1.5 knots! Hey, I was willing to take anything at this point just to say we did it. It is quite different being out in the dark. The practice is essential before sailing down south in the fall. The other accomplishment we achieved was going around the boat attaching our tethers to the jacklines. Matt was a pro at this! I felt a bit clumsy. -Good thing for practice. What are jacklines, you ask? See below. They were brough up a few weeks ago on the blog but here's a refresher.

2. Jacklines - Below you see a bunch of Union Jack Flags hanging in a line.

Photo by Claudio Mota on Pexels.com

Again, this is not the definition of jacklines when pertaining to a boat. The official definition from ASA's Coastal Cruising Made Easy book is: Jackline -A line secured to the deck as a place to attach safety tethers.

Matt did install theses a few weeks ago:

3. Lifelines - This person's lifelines need are pretty dirty & need cleaning.

Photo by Devansh Sharma on Pexels.com

No. That's not a good example of lifelines. -Although that person really should wash their hands. Lifelines are wires that go through the stantions around the perimeter of the boat. They give everyone a false sense of safety when on board. If you are in high wind, high waves or in bad weather, etc.. these will not save your life. I will have to look up the history of that namesake.

In other words, to sum up what you may or may not have learned from this posting is that lazy jacks actually work to prevent the sail from falling all over the deck. Jacklines can save your life by preventing you from falling overboard. And lifelines don't do much. Does that make sense? No? Well good, because we don't think so either.

If you didn't learn anything this week, hopefully you were at least entertained. Come back next week. We have a big surprise! I mean you'll have to judge if it's a big surprise. It's big to us. Set your expectations low & you will definitely be glad you came back!

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