Taking Down Our Sails for Some Much-Needed Care + Maintenance

…It’s like someone took the wind out of our sails. 😉

Okay, not exactly. But we did take down both the jib and main sails for some needed TLC. So, no sailing for us for the next week or two. Which is fine since we are simultaneously redoing the head/plumbing right now.

Our marine survey (back in April) revealed that the sacrificial canvas on the outer edge of our jib was in need of a little “restitching work.” That’s a nice way of saying we had a gaping, foot-long tear in one particular area of the jib’s sacrificial canvas. This becomes rather obvious once the sail is up.  Along with that, both the jib and the main sails were both in need of some ‘all-over’ restitching.

So, we took down both sails for the first time ever this weekend.

And, of course (although we were cautiously optimistic) we still thought taking the sails down would be super simple. I know — probably not the smartest considering it’s our fist time doing this.

Turns out, like most things, it took us 5+ times as long as we thought. However, I will say, the next time we need to take down the sails, I can guarantee we’ll be MUCH faster (now that we know what the heck we’re doing). 🙂

We started with our (roller furling) jib. Taking down the jib wasn’t difficult at all. But flaking it nicely (while still on the boat) was much harder than one would expect.

We did the best we could (which was horrible) and then bundled it all up and carried it off the boat.

…We decided that our jib sail flaking and folding was so ugly and bulky that we ended up carting our jib down off the dock past all the shops and restaurants in Crayton Cove, to a grassy area where we were able to unfold and spread it out in order to re-flake/fold it.

That worked much better!!!

After the jib was folded up and in the trunk of the jeep, we started on the main.

The main wasn’t too bad. Although, the worst part of the whole sail-taking-down process was the 12 or so horrible split rings that had to be removed and reattached on the sail track on the mast.

Ugh, those split rings are the worst! Your fingers and nails are basically destroyed after removing the full set. Not fun (for Jereme). (PS – We found out afterwards (always a good time for critical project information) that we didn’t need to remove the sail from the carts and would have saved a few fingernails in the process.)

Once those were all taken care of, we just unhooked the sail from the cars on the boom.  And after we untied the battens and removed them, the sail was ready to go.

We kept our regular sail ties on and folded the main in thirds and carried it off the boat. No need for a re-fold job like the jib required. The main was ready to go in the car immediately!

We drove both sails down to Bronwen the Sailmaker on Marco Island. She came highly recommended from several folks in the sailing community. It will take at least a week for her to restitch and make the necessary repairs on both sails.

And, I’m sure putting the sails back up is going to probably go as smoothly as taking them down. 😉 So at this point, I’ll say project half complete!

Here are a few extras from today’s festivities at the dock…

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