This past weekend in Seattle was sunny with a light breeze. Mason and I took the opportunity to prepare for our rig haul out in mid-February. Surprisingly, it was much easier than anticipated! It took us about an hour and a half to get the sails down, remove the battens, and flake everything—though not without a couple of mishaps along the way:
- We lost the ball bearings of two Harken mast cars. The Harken mast car design was new to us, and, as always, Mason—the ever-practical, “let’s-read-the-instructions” engineer—asked, “Remind me how this goes again? I explained what I thought was the process: on my families boat, Frøya, the whole sail was raised, and a small section of the mast track near the gooseneck was removed, allowing the sail and cars to slide off together. Confident, we got to work. Turns out this Harken track doesn’t work like that—it’s designed to keep the cars on the track and separate the sail via a pin-and-ring ding. We raised the sail and removed the bottom piece of the mast track. Mason stayed by the mast, and I lowered the sail from the cockpit. It took not one but two cars—ball bearings scattering all over the deck—for Mason to yell, “STOP lowering the sail!” He looked on, equal parts disappointed and resigned to our lack of preparation, while I just shrugged. Live and learn, ya know?
- Next, we had to remove the battens. Couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to access the batten flap, so I just cut it to free the battens. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but still a bit of a head-scratcher.
After that, we spent another hour and a half detaching the boom. Mason went up in the bosun’s chair to detach the forward runners—no issues there, thank goodness.
Now the mast is almost ready for haul-out. Next weekend, we’ll secure all the halyards to the mast. Right now, all tail ends of the lines lead from the base of the mast to the cockpit for easy sail handling.
Our plan is to attach fishing line to the cockpit ends of the halyards and thread them back to the base of the mast. That way, when we reinstall the mast, we can pull the halyards back to the cockpit without too much hassle. Sounds easy, right? But let’s be honest—this will probably involve a lot of cursing as we fumble to thread fishing line through holes and whatever gunk is hiding beneath the cabin top.
The left photo shows the sails and boom still on, while the right photo has the sails removed and the boom resting along the starboard rail. Progress!
