Sail repairs and Harken Battcar maintenance……

Lucey Blue has sailed a long way in her time and while the last set of sails were new in 2005-2006 it was clear we needed to do some routine maintenance. A good friend of mine Ben Gemmell dropped by to help remove the mainsail and blade jib.



The full battened main is enormous and it took forever to extract it from the reefing lines, lazy jacks and Harken batten cars etc, however, I have known Ben since school and capsized/broken more 12 foot skiffs than I care to remember, so the job was fun.



With the main out of the way I took the time to inspect the rest of the sail-related hardware. The Harken Battcar system is really well made, but after 19 years of use and many tens of thousands of sea miles later the aluminium toggles that connect the fibreglass battens to the Battcars needed to be replaced. The guys at Harken Australia were really helpful and managed to obtain the correct spares for the Battcars within a week– at $25 Australian per toggle the repair bill was much smaller than I had expected.


After a few repairs at Ben’s sail loft and with refurbished Harken Battcars it was time to reinstall our working sails. Everyone helped out and after much fiddling around pushing the 18+ foot battens back into their batten pockets, the job was done!!!



To celebrate another job complete Sam gave the saloon cabin a festive feel with her new tea-lights and we sat down to a well-earned dinner.

Noakes – Rigging replaced and back in the water

During the second week Noakes removed and replaced all the standing stainless steel rigging on Lucey Blue. The job was undertaken with the mast in-situ so it was one stay at a time and a guy at each end – one at deck level and the other up the mast.

We missed the show, but they kept the old rigging for us to inspect…


The original rigging was “apparently” new in 2005 and looked in reasonable condition except for one lower stay which had three broken stainless steel strands.


We could not confirm the age of the rigging so given the size of the mast and the fact we only have one forestay we decided to replace the lot and start afresh – thus giving us at least 5-10 years of trouble free service.


Shortly after the rigging was replaced Noakes lowered Lucey Blue back into Sydney Harbour to await our return…..

Going Up The Mast...

A recent post on the Pegasus blog here, inspired me to go up Lucey Blue's mast and have a look around. The view from up Pegasus' mast was beautiful (their video should have been in the Britain From The Air documentary I watched here last night...great show!).

We have a bit of an unfair advantage over Pegasus though, as we have mast steps and a crows nest (for people who need to stop and rest on the way up...like me ;-). On Pegasus, Hamish had to prusik up the mast, and I can tell you now I'd be having none of that...maybe when I was 20...but not now!

First off Emily took a turn, and for someone who is only 5, she did an awesome job!




...note Mr 3 manning the winch below - you'll be pleased to know that the rope was tied off elsewhere and he had no control over Emily's ascent or otherwise ;-).


Holding on for dear life (even though we did tell her she was firmly tied off)! Check out her groovy full-body harness too. Emily has much tougher feet than me...I couldn't do it barefoot!


...takin' the easy way down


Then it was my turn...



Getting around the spreaders and the radar and TV antennas was not that much fun! By the time I had got to the crows nest I was pooped and decided not to go any further.


(Nick trying to make it look like I got a long way up....but in reality I made it about half way. Since the mast is about 17.2 m tall, that's only about 8.5 m up). But the view was still good.



...the trampolines look nice from up here

...note the missing main (away for repairs) and bimini + dodger (also being repaired and altered).

And finally up went Nick...for some real work. The Halyard for the Code 0 sail (which we don't have) was jammed in the pulley up there (I am sure there is better terminology to describe that, but I don't currently know what it is...):

...sorry its so dark, you'll have to believe me he is up there!

...so that was our morning climbing Lucey Blue's mast. It was fun!

Sam.