Sailing Bear and Seal

Due to mechanical failure on the hardware that attaches our main sail to the mast, too much tug was placed on the sailcloth and eventually it started to give way. Mark noticed it on the take down of the main in the morning when we do our sail changes to that big, beautiful spinnaker.

It doesn’t matter if it is a holiday or not. We postponed our holiday brunch and pulled out Bette Blue, our powerhouse walking foot Sailrite sewing machine and got to work.

Taking the main sail fully down and sewing it in the cockpit was not my idea of a good time, so we dropped it to the coach roof and patched it there with some sunbrella fabric (the only thing strong we have aboard). We have a sail repair kit, but sail tape wasn’t going to fix this mess. Less than 90 minutes later, the patch was on and the heavy work of getting the battens back in, the batten cages screwed in with new screws and the batten cages locked into the cars on the mast. Equatorial sun is NO JOKE. It is lovely in the breeze and shade of the cockpit where we spend our days. It is NOT LOVELY on the coach roof, sweating my ass off in the blazing sun.

Sail is patched. We can take it down and sew the right material on when we make landfall. Hiva Oa has a sail loft with a flawless reputation so I will beg a small patch of Dacron fabric from them. And we can take down the sail and do it right. I just needed something “right now”. It works.

Our reward for a hard days work in the sun was a lighting fast dinner. Prepackaged honey ham slices tossed on a hot frying pan, 1-minute instant cheese mashed potatoes, steamed veggies and reheated (in foil as I steamed the last of our fresh vegetables) Juliete’s Jiffy Corn Casserole left over from last night’s chili dinner. If you haven’t had Jiffy Corn Casserole, run-don’t-walk, to the store, buy the ingredients, and speed home to make it. This stuff is delicious. 12 year old Krista said she’d never buy creamed corn when she became an adult and Future Krista made that little girl into a liar! Our family friends, the Raabes, moved from Fairbanks to all over the globe and have most recently settled in Coronado, Panama. When we were staying at Vista Mar Marina on the Pacific side of Panama, we frequently drove the fifteen minutes east and enjoyed plenty of Raabe dinners. The evening of Mike’s smoked chicken, Juliete made her Jiffy Corn Casserole and I have thought of it every night since.

Let me know in the comments section what your favorite holiday dinner side dish is. Extra points for the recipe.

Here’s Mark’s video on the repair. Enjoy!