Saturday's Non-Volunteer Day Still Productive.

The gangway had just been lowered
 from an angle two feet higher

 It was cold messy weather, Saturday morning;  driving rain, heaving decks and gusting gale-force winds on deck and  dark below deck. Topping that, a  super King tide at raised the ship, and it's gangway to awkwardly high levels.  To keep the gangway off the lifeline stanchions and away from the mainmast, the Mystic Whaler crew hauled the inboard end of the gangway higher.

 In spite of it, six volunteers climbed(yes, literally) the  swinging gangway, to drop down onto the deck Saturday morning. Questions of sanity aside, Danny Johnson, Tony Marchesani, John Hart, Calvin Milam, and Nate Mack, joined Volunteer Coordinator, Bryan Oliver in the Saloon to check the Punch list for projects to work below deck.  Four of us settled on building a Thump mat for the Foresail sheet traveler that when installed, would dampen the shock of the large foresail sheet block as it would slacken.  Bryan and Calvin, climbed out and descended into the engine room to review the current status of troubleshooting on the unoperative Genset. 

While Calvin gathered tools brushes and solvent to start cleaning battery terminals and solenoid connections, Bryan returned to the saloon where the others had already retrieved a large coil of manila from the lazarette and starting to measure out the dimensions for roughly 4' by 2' oval thump mat.  Danny ran one end of the coil back up on deck and aft to straighten the rope and twist out the hockles. 

John Harter, Calvin Milam, Tony Marchesani
(in the dark) and Bryan Oliver
 set last stitches into the thump mat.

John and  Tony pulled out the Canvas repair bag, selected some choice large needles and twine, then started laying out a tight flat coil, stitching at four different points as each turn was laid down.   Nate climbed up on deck to examine his work from last week installing the new Main Mast boot, and isolate the small leak that seemed to be developing around the mast wedges.  Seeing where water seemed to be pooling around the base where excess canvas remained to be trimmed, Nate acquired a box cutter from the tool locker and trimmed the excess canvas off around the mast base collar, and free the pooling water, joined  the crew in the saloon for the thump mat sewing bee. 

Morale was maintained with half-dozen donuts Bryan had brought down,  Danny had procured a usual selection a pie and baked goods for the ship, but, given the donuts, he brought the bagful up on deck, handing it across the rail to Mystic Whaler's crew standing anchor watch, who gratefully accepted the donation.

As noon approached, Calvin finished his work cleaning contacts and battery terminals around the Genset starter solonoid. Charlie Porzelt  came aboard and received a briefing from Calvin about what had been trouble-shot so far, then disappeared into the engine room for another half-hour while volunteers finished sewing the thump mat, then turned to whipping loose ends of manila.  John turned in a large eye splice at the end, then brought the mat up to install under the foresail sheet traveler.. Perfect fit.