Jib's back on - Hurray!

This afternoon (Thursday) we put the jib back on its furler. The gusty winds that we've had for the past week are finally subsiding so we decided to take advantage of the lull and put the sail up and reclaim some space in the cockpit where it has been sitting since last Friday.

We took the jib to the sailmaker last week to have a bit of preventative maintenance done to it. The stitching along the sacrificial strip needed to be restitched. We are fairly pleased with the work they did. There are a few missed stitches but it is much better work than how we got this sail back from the other Dutch-side sail loft last year (2008).

Last year, the jib had a bit of wear to the leech where it rubbed against the spreader so we wanted it repaired before doing some summer sailing. This is how they repaired it. They didn't even tuck the edge under. We didn't take the jib out of the bag and put the sail back on until shortly before it was time to leave, so unfortunately there wasn't time to take it back to the sail loft and complain. We really need to inspect things when we get them... we have too much faith in people & products and just assume that everything is correct (that's the way it should be, right???).

(Sails after being "repaired" from last year's sailmaker)

So, sail needle in hand, Bob fixed this bit, along with other places that they neglected, with some overcast hand stitching.

This worked well for last season, but we decided to take it to the other sail loft this summer to have them give it a check-up and fix what they felt was needed. It was $45/hour for a total of 2.5 hours. We were happy with that, as it was about the same as what we paid last year. They did more than just restitching. One of the things they did was that they changed the leading bit of the luff tape at the head of the sail and this made it much easier to hoist, as it slid up the track better than in the past. The new tell-tails will be nice, too.

So, after we re-installed the jib and had a celebratory Coke Zero, I went and found some pvc-type of fabric and lashed it to the lower portion of the furled sail.

Buffy and Willow like to reach as high as they can on the furled jib and give it a bit of claw flexing activity. Hopefully, the stitiching is protected from their sharp little nails now :)

One chore off the list... but there are still plenty more.

So It Goes :)