Power Boat Owners

M/V Capaz

At this juncture, we basically own a powerboat. Both rigs were pulled today at the Seaview East yard in Ballard. Most of the day went pretty much as planned with only one injury. Our mast pulling operations foreman, Harris, got whacked in the forehead by a turnbuckle as the main mast was being lowered onto the cart. He promised me that he was OK and was able to deliver a boat through locks later on so, I will have to trust his diagnosis.
So, Capaz is now a funny looking mastless sailboat (some would call it a powerboat). With the help our friend, Andy Schwenk, owner of Northwest Rigging in Anacortes, Capaz will have all new standing rigging. Both masts were inspected (something that one should do every 3 or 4 years) twice (by Andy and then another friend, who happens to a surveyor, stopped by and put his eyes on them also). Brad, Andy and I spent a couple of hours undressing the masts. I learned a lot about masts today. Some of it very reassuring and some of it a little scary. Most of our rigging is pretty oversized (much stronger stuff than it needs to be) - that's the good news. On the other side of the coin, I learned that the rigging is attached at the spreaders to the mast with very thin wire - granted several wraps of said thin wire, but still, I expected much beefier attachment methods. I have been assured that it is all very standard and safe. I also learned how to pull out codder pins using something Andy calls, "Le Tool" and how to coil big cables.

How it happened:

We weren't sure if we could get the boat back through the locks and be home in time for Austin's return from school on the bus, so we altered our plans a little. I ran home, grabbed dinner makings, picked Austin up at school and met Brad at Shilshole to drop a car off there. Then we proceeded back to the boat yard and finished cleaning up our tools before heading for the locks. Austin is going to make a great boat kid as he did his math homework this afternoon as were waiting for the small lock's green light. Back at Shilshole, we had a quick dinner and covered the holes in the boat so that rain won't get inside. Even if some does, we started up our new dehumidifier - our live-abroad neighbors swear by them for winters in Seattle. (Did you know that the hurricanes in Texas caused a dehumidifier shortage here in the NW? The people at Home Depot were so excited to get a shipment because they haven't been able to since last summer!!! Who knew?) Brad hopes to be able to put the rigs back into the boat next week!
We will be back to being sailboat owners!