Half-Awning over the deck complete and ready for rigging up. Now, Repeat.

 Saturday was a great day to be on the water.  Undoubtedly many volunteers were on it somewhere else, or at graduations, or other engagements, unfortunately not on deck Saturday morning. 

Five of us, however, did muster on deck Saturday morning, and we'll say "you're welcome" in advance when the next Volunteer Day comes around under a sunny, much warmer day and y'all can take shade under a refurbished main deck awning.  Well, half of one anyway. 

That was an urgent objective this weekend, before the days get hotter,  to reconfigure what was left of our old wind-shredded awning, into a functional awning over the "waist", the center deck area between masts.

Bryan sketched out a plan to retrieve the old enormous spread of awning that stretched across port-to-starboard over the furled foresail.  We'd cut the old awning in half, fore-to-aft; creating two halves whose edges would be tabled, then re-grommeted to enable the two halves to be laced together over the gaff, then stretched outward to the cap rails. Shredded edges would be folded over and tabled, effectively creating a new triple thickness edge. 

Tony and Ken check final
measure for the cut line
 to separate the old canvas
 into 2 halves.

While Tony Marchesani, and Dan Maurin retrieved the old awning from the forecastle and spread it out on the dock, Doug Hartley lay out on the jib boom with a small bucket of D.1 to apply a third coat. Ken Fonville located "Juki" our highly temperamental but super-fast straight-stitching sewing machine from the salon, and hauled it up on deck and over to the dock.  

Doug Hartley checks plug-in of "Juki" while
Tony, Dan, and Ken stretch out the awning
 to locate the corner for marking.

Shifting deck boxes around, Doug and Dan set up Juki on the deck box, pulled out the Instruction manual and refreshed themselves on the bobbin-loading, threading, and tensioning steps. Ken and Tony stretched out the awning, Ken tape-measured distances taken from the gaff-to caprail, transferring them to the awning with a magic marker.   So far, the plan was working.. Success now rested on Juki's cooperation. 

Juki has a reputation.  If you've worked with her before, you know what I mean.

Doug, with foot on the gas slowly accelerates his 

feed  under Juki's needle while Dan keeps the 

six sunbrella layers from puckering.

Extremely finicky, she balks at any perceived slightest violation of  thread tensioning, thread-routing protocol.  If you can get the set up right. chances of an amazingly speedy, uninterrupted run was.. pretty good.  If you didn't,  Juki would cruelly tease you with four inches of smooth run before abruptly  snapping the upper thread, or jamming with a horrendous thread gordian knot just under the plate, requiring, five minutes of digging out, then rethreading.

 

   

We would face much time experimenting with everything in effort to mollify Juki.  It was worth it, because we were facing about 140 feet of straight stitching, which would take days, weeks(!) of hand flat-stitching with needle and sailor's palm-really not an option.

Thank's to John Crane's sturdy storage box construction, Juki's storage box doubled as a seat while Doug started the first edge.  It went swimmingly.. 12 feet of tabling flew under Juki's needle in about 45 seconds.  We started on the next edge,, then it all went wrong. Juki turned on us, jamming, busting threads, every four inches.. We returned to the manual, discovered a hook where the thread should've run, but came off.  And started again.. 4 feet of good run, thread broke.  Adjusted tension.. another jam.  Frustration.. 

Thankfully, Volunteers were distracted from possible violence, possibly float-testing Juki, when Hunter's called up from the galley  announcing "Lunch!"  Volunteers clambered below into the saloon, threw hats into a bunk and lined up for plate-full's of Paella.. That's right,, Paella!  Saffron rice, spices, and peppers, with a seafood shellfish medley.  Oh, we happy few. 

I believe Paella has a magical mellowing effect. After lunch, volunteers came back out to the dock determined to make an amends with Juki and finish this one Awning half. A turn of the thread tensioner, a decision to avoid trying punching thru 7 layers of sunbrella in reverse,, a few other techniques I forgot, and the rest of the edge tabling went fairly smoothly.  As Bryan and Dan, sweet-talked Juki thru the last 25 feet, Tony and Doug marked out  grommet points spaced 12 inches apart on the inner edge that would lay over the gaff. 

They pounded in the last grommet at 1500 hours, and all stopped to put away, secure, and clean up. All that remained for this half-awning was to  cut and install guy lines and lacing ropes.  

Hopefully next weekend, with an additional volunteers, we can repeat the process for the 2d half.