Major UP-Rig Milestone Accomplished -Mainmast Boom and Gaff are back on position.

  A lot of emotions cut loose late Saturday afternoon on Spirit of South Carolina's quarter deck after we'd successfully set both the mainsail boom, and gaff onto the mast and rigged. It really was sort of a big deal. All volunteers just pulled off a pretty complex Marlinspike seamanship  project, and under some motivation-sapping hot weather conditions. Somebody quoted Shakespeare's  Henry the V, .. 'we few, we happy few, we band of brothers,.. and gentlemen now abed[or kicked back in their lazy boy with the AC blasting] will think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhood cheap while any tells our story.." 

It was a long time coming.

At first, the plan was not to start until mid-afternoon when the high tide would give the crew a more horizontal angle for pulling the main sail boom up and out over the dock for the best angle of setting the jaws.  

Bryan and Logan using the
 Crew manual for  walking
 thru the Pinrail layout.

So Bryan organized the morning with some deckhand skills refreshment, especially since our ranks were flush with four new volunteers.  By lunch we were done, and noticed the tide was already at a sufficiently high state to go to work, and so we shifted.

 After a two-hour  preparation of  fairing-out and securing  the massive main peak and throat halyard tackles to the boom, along with three separate tag lines to steady the boom's position in mid-air, and a deliberately methodical rehearsal of the  five different volunteer teams manning those tackles testing the strain, the 11-person volunteer crew was ready.

With the gangway pulled onto the dock,
 Dan Maurin maintains tension on a tagline
 keeping the  just-raised mainsail  boom centered
 over the deck.

  Phase II; the gangway was removed and secured on the dock in order to clear the deck obstacles over the boom lying there. Next, Volunteer Coordinator, Bryan Oliver, acting as conductor, directed each team separately to haul or ease, or hold, slowly raising the massive boom up off the deck inching it aft-ward 25 feet, and into a position to sit the jaws around the main mast., cradling the end aft end of the boom in a specially fabricated "crutch".

Volunteer deckhands Walter Barton, Alex Lya,
 and Doug Hartley on the main boom's aft tag line
 maintaining aft pressure on the suspended
 boom, angling it over the transom.

The half-ton main mast boom was suspended over the aft deck in a counterbalance of opposing tackles and taglines when the massive jaws of the main boom eased onto the mainmast table. 

Volunteers Dave, Nate, and Dave Lazar control
 the mast boom's slow descent into it's cradle,
as Matt, Ken, and Todd Cole at the jaws
push the boom aft to clear the mast

Two volunteers jumped to secure the parrel bead loop around the front of the mast, effectively tying the boom to the mast. The rest then swarmed the aft end of the boom to set up the quarter tackles, preventing it from swinging our of the crutch.

Dan Maurin, Nate Mack, Tod Cole, and Walter Barton
 complete rigging up the mainsail gaff
with her throat and peak halyards,,
now ready to haul up into position.

Phase III; Now all that was left was setting up the mainsail gaff, a much smaller spar, already configured to receive the peak and throat halyards. 

Again, a pair of tag lines were made fast to either end of the gaff to control the swing and yaw as it was lifted up and swung over to open arms at the mast to set the jaws and secure the gaff's parrel beads around the front. 

The gaff up-rig took less than 15 minutes.

One last task,, lash the boom to the gaff, using the gaff's halyard holding power to also hold up the boom, taking some of the compression  strain off the crutch until the boom lift pendants could be uprigged. 

It was complete! worthy of a group selfie which was quickly organized.

The Band of Brothers who finished the job;
 Ken Fonville, Frank Lazar, Walter Baron, Nate Mack,
Dave Brennan, Jody Smith, Doug Hartley, Todd Cole,
 and Alex Lya.  Not pictured are Dan Maurin,
Logan Day, and Jamie Wert. 

And a special thanks, much gratitude goes to Hunter, who took care of us volunteers with some great lunches, over the past two years, a most attractive incentive  for returning volunteers. This was his last Saturday with us, since he's be heading home to the Dominican Republic and 'throwing out his anchor".

The job's still not complete. During the of the mainmast Peak and Throat tackles, the UK Sails rigger could not locate the two pendants that would secure the boom lift blocks aloft.  A search of the vessel did not produce them.  An easily fabricated thing for traditional ship sailors, so we'll wait a decision to go internal or contract out to produce the replacement pendants, or "jeers," depending on which rigger's resource you reference.