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GETTING THE BOAT READY -

(picture: A view from the top of the mast.)

    Ever since being inducted into the crew I worked on the boat. Day 1, I went up the mast and mounted a navigation light, and a wind speed instrument. When I got down I mentioned to Walter that he should test the navigation light out that night. His response was sort of like, don't worry about it.  We, the crew, were all involved with doing different task on the boat. Jerry was making up some Stern Mounts which would be connect to either a boat  ladder, or a ramp. Richard was installing  U-bolts in back of the dingy, and Bob was making the stern ramp, which would also have a non-slip surface, to Jerry's stern mounts. Also Bob and myself were working together on making deck mounts so that the coolers could be tied to. For two weeks I showed up at the boat almost every day, sometimes for 4, 6 or more hours. Every couple of days I would ask Walter if he tested out the navigation light. Answer: No.
    Walter had a  white van that was full of tools, bolts, paint cans, and other sailboat rigging gear. He was able to sell the truck to a guy that would pick it up the morning of the day that we were suppose to leave. So everyday for the next two week, that I was working on the boat, he would take some stuff off  the van and either throw it in the garbage, or offer it to someone to take, or bring it to the boat. Now the stuff that would wind up on his boat would sit on the deck for a few days while he decided what to do with it. I noticed that a lot of his time was consumed with doing this.
    The day that we were suppose to leave Walter decides to test out the navigation light. It doesn't work! He suggest that maybe I did not crimp the butt splices correctly.  I told that I was pretty careful in the way I did it and that I felt that they should be OK. I volunteer to go up the mast again. I told him to put a volt meter in the bag with the other tools that will go aloft with me. When I got to the top of the mast I was able to get the probes of the meter into the ends of the butt splices and measure the voltage. I yell down to him that I only measure 1.6 volts ( I should of measured 12 volts). He doesn't believe that I am taking a correct measurement. So I tell him that I will cut the splices open and measure the voltage again. I again tell him again 1.6 volts. I re-splice the  wires and come down the mast.
 (Picture on right: A selfie, The marina an I)

Once down he questions me as to weather I had the meter on the right scale. I told him that I have been using volt meters all my life and that I know what scale to put it on. Then he jumps to "maybe the probes were not making good contact with the meter".  I shake my head and go onto something else. This was Sunday. Tomorrow we were suppose to leave. that is not going to happen now. Not without  navigation lights.
   I have to say that there were a lot of little red flags that I was seeing about the captains performance and his decisions, but at the same time,  I wanted to go on this trip so I ignored them. I remember one day Jerry shows up at the boat with Bob, his emotions  elevated as he tells the captain that he wanted to make this a safe trip, and as a result he wanted to rig the mainsail differently. He must of anticipated that the captain was not going to like this. Anyway the foot of the mainsail was attached to a roller reefing boom. That means that as you lower the sail you turn a crank on the boom which winds the sail around it. like a window shade. A very neat way of storing the mainsail, but also as you lower the sail the slides come out of the track on the mast and wrap with the sail around the boom. So far so good. The problem is that when you go to raise the sail, you have to raise it to the point of where a slide is at least a foot above the entrance to the track on the mast, then you have to gorilla the slide over to the track and slide it in. The front edge of the main sail is about 4 inches behind the mast so the slides were not really lined up with the track. After you get that slide in you have to go through the same process of raising the sail another two feet before you insert the next slide. As you can see raising the mainsail was a very laborious project, and you need at least two people to do it.. Jerry's idea was to rig the sail as it on most typical sailboats that is: it is flaked on the boom, and tied in place with slip knots, and when you want to raise the sail, all you have to do is release the ties, that is done with just a pull on the tail of the knot, and pull the sail up the mast with the main halyard. The slides never come out of the track in this setup , so therefore a lot easier system to control, and also one person can do it. . Well,,, the captain did not like the idea that his brand new sail was going to be treated in this fashion. Also, he had a point , that a sail of this length, foot wise , was going to be pretty difficult to flake neatly on the boom. Actually with four of us it was a task. The only thing is when you are on the ocean who cares if it is neat. You just want it to be fast, He was trying to tell us that his system was not difficult at all. Well...think about this, with two people on watch, the other two getting their big 4 hour sleep below, who was going to steer the boat while the sail was being raised? You could say "Use the auto pilot", well we will talk more about that later.
    Getting back to the navigation light, the following day, the day that we were suppose to leave, Walter goes up the mast as far as the spreaders. I had no idea of what he was doing, but he was up there for at least an hour. It turns out that there was a junction box at the height of the spreaders that had a circuit board in it that controlled the navigation light above. It turns out that the PC board inside the junction box had corrosion on it.  So he removes the circuit board from the junction box and directly connects the input wires to the box to the output wires. He comes down the mast and goes inside the cabin to start playing with the cable, of 4 or 5 wires, that is coming down from  the mast. What he has to do now is to connect a hot wire, from below, to the correct wire in the cable in order for the navigation light to work. Now if he wanted the anchor light to work then  he would connect the hot wire, to the anchor light wire. .

 (Picture to right: Walter working on junction box) .

    So I have to ask,  who would mount a junction box with a circuit board full of electronics halfway up the mast?  Also I  thought that when I first went up the mast to mount the navigation light that it was the first time that it was being put up there. Later I was to find out that it was up there and he took it down because it was not working. So, I'm guessing, he takes it down.  Tests it and it works. So in his mind, when he had me put it back up, He knew that the light was in good shape so why be in a hurry to retest it. :)
   We delay departure for another day, actually I told him that I thought that the boat was another two weeks to being ready. To that he laughed. Anyway that day he had me install fire extinguishers in the engine room. While doing that I noticed trays and shelves of bolts , nuts, cans of paint, lets just say all sorts of junk. I tell him that somehow he has to get  that stuff out of there, that once we start getting into rough water that stuff will be all over the engine room. I do not think, and as I find out later, he did not do a very good job of it.