Saturday, September 6, 2014

The Sails Are Nearly Done!!

I have had some business things to attend to. As a result, I've been in Santa Cruz dealing with this rather than down on MAYAN getting "work" done; which is mostly getting in Wayne's way asking inane questions. But, one piece of the project is proceeding apace just a couple of blocks from home - sail making. Yesterday my granddaughter and I walked over to check out the progress on the sails.

The white sails are all completed and waiting in bags for the big "haul" to LA.  We've taken a little different approach, non-traditional, on the main staysail and the fore staysail. They are loose footed so that we can ease the outhaul and round the sails when appropriate. The mainsail is still running on a track with cars along the boom, as it doesn't need to have the draft altered as much. But the poor staysails are either operating solitarily or are flying in the slot between the advance staysail or the yankee/genoa. As a result, I've always wanted to be able to get more shape in them when they're on their own. We'll see how well all this theory actually applies, and can always put the cars on them again if we need to.

We're keeping the original multi-colored spinnaker - which appears to have been cut down from a much bigger boat so there's no chance we'll ever blow that thing out. We are also lifting the over-size A-2 from S'AGAPO (It's not legal under PHRF, IRC or ORR) and we will just have to live with the british numbers. This A-2 is perfect for MAYAN. When flying it has an effective overlap of about 140%, a great reacher.

Finally, the gollywobbler is finally done. It's got a dyneema luff rope and triple cloth luff tape, so we can reach up more with it. But I really didn't have any idea how BIG it really is until seeing it laid out on the floor at the loft. It literally doesn't fit. Pretty funny! It is coming out exactly the way our granddaughter and Stacey wanted it.

Here's our granddaughter doing her first inspection, and you can see Patrick (a top sailmaker at Santa Cruz Sails {Now Ullman Sails}) laying out the MAYAN logo on the center section of the sail.

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Most of the stencil for the MAYAN logo is glued down now. It's computer cut with the same cutter they use on the sail cloth. Double layers of butcher paper and a bit of spray adhesive hold it in place. There is a pattern under the sail to show Patrick where to put the stencil, which was generated by replacing the cutter with a sharpie. 

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Next Patrick gets the box ink (used for putting black logos and stuff on cardboard boxes) and starts to "paint" the logo on with a foam roller. This goes fast and the black ink is amazingly potent. It covers in two passes easily, drying quickly. The solvent is denatured alcohol, so it smelled a little like a doctor's office. "Icky" said our granddaughter as she sniffed it.

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After two coats, Patrick is hunting for "thin spots" with more ink.  My wonderful granddaughter was lying down in a Syndey 38 spinnaker by this point having a little nap. Clearly a ocean going sailor in the making.

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Finally, we pulled all the masking off and revealed what our granddaughter calls the "Monster Face". Stacey and I are thrilled with the contrast between the yellow/gold cloth strip across the center of the gollywobbler and the black ink. No one will doubt which boat this is! We will be putting a 6' high version of this on the mainsail also, and have selected "1947" as our sail number (the year she was built).

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We've had hats, shirts, and vests made with this MAYAN logo and the entire package is coming out wonderfully well.

Now, back to work!

Beau

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