1.
We have a Doyle stack pack on our mainsail. (The blue bag lying horizontally atop the boom in the first photo below.) This makes taking this sail down very easy. Lene steers the boat directly into the wind and I release the clutch that holds the main halyard -- the line (rope) which we had pulled on with the electric winch to raise the big heavy mainsail. This sail's weight causes it to rush down with a whoosh! But, instead of falling all over the place thus requiring me to try to gather it together, tie it up and fit a sail cover over it to protect it from the suns ultraviolet rays, it is guided down into the blue bag by the four lines which run up on each side of the boom. The bag can then be zipped up easily. The four lines on each side are called a "lazy jack" system. They are attached at various points at the bottom along the length of the boom, and attached to a small stainless steel ring at their top. They can be seen leading upwards diagonally from the top of the blue canvas covered boom if you blow up this photo, taken back in Martinique.
The ring is held up by a single white line which leads from the ring to a block high on the mast and then down along the side of the mast to a cleat where it is fastened in the next photo. The line shown here is properly cleated; the final turn is parallel to the prior causing friction so it won't come loose.
I call these two lines, one on each side, the lazy jack halyards because they are what pull up the lazy jack lines.
Well, these same lazy jacks that make it so easy to drop the mainsail, can make it hard to raise that sail because the aft ends of the battens, which run horizontally in the sail to stiffen the fabric, get caught under the lazy jack lines, especially the rearmost one, requiring me to stop the winch, jump up and try to free the ends of the battens. Lene tries to steer as straight as possible, directly into the wind so that the sail will stream back between the two sets of lazy jack lines without the battens catching on them, but this is quite hard, if not impossible, to achieve.
Recently we have learned to avoid this batten/lazy jack conflict by lowering the lazy jack halyard and pulling all four of the lazy jack lines into an "L" shape: vertical, parallel to the mast, down to the boom and then horizontal, parallel to the boom. In fact, we only need to lower the lazy jacks on one side and keep the wind not directly from in front of us, but ever so slightly from the other side, to have the main go up trouble free.
A couple of days ago I did the lowering of the lazy jack halyard, but simply hooked a loop at the end of the lazy jack halyard to the cleat. I should have cleated it firmly down. The loop came loose and the halyard was flying free in the air. I grabbed the boat hook to try to grab the errant bitter end of this line with the hook, to no avail. I climbed up on top of the boom, holding the lazy jack lines on the unloosened side in one hand to balance myself and the boat hook in the other hand trying to snag the loose end. But by now the errant line had been twisted around other lines and it was not to be successfully snared with the boat hook.
Lene saved the day by hoisting me up in our bos'ns chair. This is a board seat bottom set in a canvas sided chair with a metal loop in front. I got into the chair and attached the same main halyard that we use to pull up the mainsail, to the metal loop of the chair, in my lap. Next is a reenactment photo; note the lazy jacks and in the down "L" position.
Then using the electric winch Lene hoisted me up the mast until I could grab the loose line, untangle it, tie it to myself and request Lene to lower me back down. The lowering down is trickier than the hauling up because we have a clutch that will not let the line slip away from Lene (thereby causing me to crash down) on the way up. But for the downward trip, this clutch must be released. For the trip down, I was reliant on the friction of the line which was turned several times around the drum of the winch, and Lene's strength and skill is slowly easing out the line, always holding on with at least one hand. Mission accomplished successfully.
2.
As soon as the anchor came up (which is my job, with the electric windlass doing the heavy lifting) it was necessary for Lene to put the engine, which had been idling in neutral, into gear to take us away from the other boats and into open water so the boat can be headed into the wind to raise the mainsail (see item 1.) Lene yelled: "She won't go into gear!" I raced back and took the wheel and said: "No; she is in gear, the only problem is that the tachometer has somehow stopped working so it looks like there is no motion but we are being propelled in forward gear." This photo shows the tach while the engine is off, and also the ignition key and the red "STOP" button which get involved later.
The sail was raised and we went on. Fifteen minutes later Lene went below and yelled: "The batteries are reading only 11.70 volts (which is very low) and the indicator that shows whether the batteries are charging shows no charge going into them." The next photo shows the house bank battery, number 2, at a reasonable 12.20 volts and the green light by "Charge" at its left, shows that a charge is going into the battery. A charge goes into the battery when we have the engine running as we do every day for an hour. Our refrigeration depends on that daily charge.
I raced into the cabin and Lene took the wheel. I shut off the refrigerator and the watermaker and asked Lene to steer by hand, putting the autopilot into standby, thereby eliminating the three items that take the most juice out of the batteries. Then I started thinking about who was going to repair our electrical system once we got to port. But Lene saved the day again, noting that the engine switch was in the wrong position. The key in the ignition has three positions: "Start" is to the extreme right; "On" in the middle position and "Off" to the left. As in a car, you turn to start to engage the starter motor which starts the engine and then release the key which snaps back to "On". It is in the nature of diesels that they require no electricity to keep running once they are on, but engage in dieseling to keep running until deprived of fuel or air. So the way to turn the engine off is to press the red Stop button. When the engine stops, there is a beep and the beep is then turned off by turning the key from On to Off. What had happened was that I'd heard the starter motor's whine for a fraction of a second after the engine started so I turned the key to the left toward On to shut the starter motor off, noting that this key was in needed of a bit of lubrication. But instead of turning from Start back to On, I had gone too far and turned it to Off. This did not shut down the engine but merely shut down its electrical system. Lene turned the key from Off to On and the engine continued to purr, but the tachometer came back on and the batteries were charging again.
3.
Lene's most heroic rescue took place in Tyrell Bay on Carriacou where it was hot and windless. I put up a white nylon "fly" that came with the boat, over five years ago, but had never been used. It is designed to provide shade over the boat to keep it cool. But on a windy day it is both not needed and presents a big piece of cloth that can blow the boat around.
Never having seen it installed, it took me four tries to get it on right. First I sought to rig it up over the front of the boat, from the bow back to the mast, but it obviously did not fit. Next I put it up from the mast back, covering the salon (living room/dining room), but it had no fore and aft symmetry which was obviously wrong. Having seen it spread out, I figured out how to get it on in a symmetrical way. Finally I recognized a loop in the middle on the bottom. This meant that the thing was upside down, because the loop in question was for the attachment of the main halyard to pull up the center of this "tent". Finally it was on right, forming a sort of pup tent over the boat to keep the deck in the shade in the heat of the day when the sun is high. It has seven small diameter lines at each side of the tent to tie it down. Later I fine tuned its many strings to get it into a more taut shape. There are all sorts of snaps at its front edge, perhaps to attach a second piece of it to the piece we do have, to cover the area from the bow to the mast, but this piece, if it ever existed, is nowhere we know of.
That night, after dark, perhaps eight o'clock, Lene is still up but I had a buzz in my head from the second gin and tonic I had made. She heard a loud spash, so loud that on this calm night, even our neighbors on their boat heard it. Lene looked around but saw nothing, even with her flashlight. Fifteen seconds later she heard a loud meow and looked again. There was Whitty, the orange male cat, swimming and meowing, but not making any progress toward the boat because a small current was taking him away. She called me to rouse me, jumped into the water fully clothed, reached Whitty, grabbed him (he did not resist) and used her legs to swim to the swim platform where I took him from her arms. Then I got towels to mop up the water he dripped throughout the cabin and to dry him. Lene took her second shower of the evening to wash off the salt and peace was restored -- except that Alpha Girl, possibly not recognizing Whitty because of the loss of his customary feline smell, hissed and growled at him for most of the next day. A happy, dry Whitty, laying on the foot of our bed and playing with the line that is used to hold up the lee cloth which is connected when we are underway to prevent falling out of bed:
We concluded that in playing tag with each other the cats had gotten from the relatively flat and easily grabbable Sunbrella canvas fabric of the dodger and bimini, to this shiny nylon fly with sides slanted down like a pup tent and he had slid off. So we took the tent down, and will not fly it again while the cats are aboard, which is why we have no photo of it.
Lene is the heroine of the entire crew, feline and human for her three recent big saves.
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