First Thursday Volunteer Evening a Success-Heat Wave shortens Saturday to a Half-Day again.

Thursday turned out to be a successful experiment;

An opportunity for Volunteers to help out on a weekday, after work-hours, with an added summer benefit of being on the water in late afternoon when the heat was dying down and the sea breezes were kicking in.  

Two Volunteers mustered with Bryan Oliver Thursday afternoon.  Nate Mack showed up early and started scraping down the main mast gaff spar to wood, in prep for sealing and varnishing.  Doug Hartley and Bryan boarded together. Doug started helping Nate on the gaff, while Bryan searched in vain for  another can of Deks-olje D.1 to prep the gaff.  Not finding any, he sought advice from shipwright John Riddle, and finally called Capt Hackett with the dilemma.  Receiving guidance from Capt Heath,   Bryan happily conveyed to the crew that we would no longer be investing in the Deks-olje product. Instead we would transition to the Interlux label of preservative sealant(1026) and the Interlux Schooner Varnish (96). 

As Doug and Tony completed their scraping of the gaff, Nate transitioned to restoring the bronze hinges to the salon butterfly hatches. 

Nate fitting one of the bronze T-hinges
 onto the Port salon hatch cover.

 Previously, Dave Lazar had re-fabricated leather strut hinges for both hatch covers. Now it remained to re-install the heavy bronze T-hinges.  Nate was discovering that most screw holes were worn out, requiring a shim or filler to regain a screw grip and water-tight seal. Using scrape sapele splinters and wood glue,  and Dolphinite bedding compound, Nate was able to reinstall four bronze hinges to one of the salon hatches. The other hatch cover would require dowel insertions into each screw hole to properly secure the screw holes.. Project for Saturday;  Meanwhile- One more component operational.  

Bryan out on the head rig, laying one
 final coat of varnish

As other projects were winding down, Bryan was just getting started on his own, the varnishing of the jib boom and jumbo boom.  Laying out on the jib boom  to the jib stay, with a tub the last pint from an old can of Deks-Olje D.2   Bryan spend the next couple hours, laying on a layer down the length of each spar. 

Saturday morning we were prepared again for the hot day.  

Doug and Bryan examine the foresail's
peak halyard  tackle to replicate
 on the mainmast.

At Muster, our igloo water jug was filled with ice water and hung on deck at the midships lifelines. Awnings stretched and adjusted over midships, and projects selected to take advantage of shade where possible or be broken up for frequent shade/water breaks. 

 Doug lifted morale for the morning by relating his success in identifying interested individuals from a local rock-climbing club to help us up rig the main mast.  That re-oriented our focus to preparations for the up-rigging. Arrangement of the Peak halyard and jigger tackles needed to be confirmed and components labeled.  A gantline tackle needed to be rigged up and prepped to accompany the climber, to enable us to haul up the heavy halyard blocks and boom lift fittings up to the top of the mast for the climber's installation.

Boom lift tackles and lazy jacks
layed out on the dock in preparation
 for being mounted on the mainmast.

Doug and Nate immediately set out retrieving the coiled boom lift cables and their attached lazy jacks from the forecastle and laying them out on the dock.  Next, they stretched out the main peak halyard tackle along the portside quarterdeck to arrange and align the four blocks as they would be mounted on the mainmast. 

Bryan and Tony marking off the flag halyard
 with tape at 10-ft intervals to estimate
height of mast, and length of the gantline.

Tony and Bryan used the main mast flag halyard, measured out 10-foot increments to estimate the total length of gantline to reeve thru the gantline block, sufficient to haul up the tackles to the top of the mainmast.

With main mast up-rigging preparations as complete as we could make them, volunteers gratefully sought the shade of the awnings to work on a different project sitting down.  Nate retrieved a huge coil of large halyard rope, taken from the excess scope of the Yokohama fenders dock lines and began turning in an eyesplice in one end, then sailor-whipping the opposite end.

Tony took charge of completing the sanding of the mainsail gaff, then following with an initial application of Interlux Wood Preservative-Sealant. This was actually a big deal. It marked the start of a transition  from our Deks-Olje D.1 and D2 Varnishing system that had been in use since 2015, to a simpler 2-part Interlux system. I think we all will welcome the change. from 8 coats of D.1, and 12 coats of D2, to 2 coats Interlux 1026, and maybe 4 coats of Interlux Schooner Varnish #96.(annual recoat
s of course). 

Bryan coaching Doug on turning-in
an endsplice onto the heaving line.

Doug pulled out the remaining Hemp rope already cut to five forty-foot lengths for heaving lines, and began turning in an eyesplice into the ends, and endsplicing the bitter ends.

Bryan explains the standard for
 gasket coiling a heaving line.

As Nate completed his work with the repurposed halyard, Bryan and Nate gathered it up, and with help of both boat hooks, completed a swap of  the aft-most Yokohama fender's spring line (currently one of the ship's dedicated dock lines) -  with Nate's new eyespliced loop onto the Yokohama's telephone pole axle.  The result was retrieving an expensive dock line that had been emergency-rigged onto the yokohama fender, and restoring it to it's intended purpose as a ship's dock line.  One down- one to go.

Our final trial before mustering off was to field-test our new heaving lines with the new hemp-style line that had replace the abhorrent nylon line.

 Doug took the honors. So, pacing off about 40 feet on the finger dock, Doug highwayman's-hitched the end of his heaving line onto a rail, coiled up , eyed his target down the dock (Nate with his arms outstretched),  and launched it in a low line-drive directly over Nates shoulder, a perfect pitch that most importantly, easily stretched the heaving line to its limit, with no snags.  Nate and Tony each took their turn testing out the new heaving line.

Bryan capped off the test with "recovering from a simulated miss;" that is, a thrown line that failed for whatever reason to be caught, thereby requiring the thrower to hastily retrieve the heaving line hand-over-hand, piling it at his feet, then winding up and heaving the weighted end(monkeys fist, or in this case canvas bag of #6 bird shot)  again, without time to re-coil the line gathered at his feet( 15 seconds is the standard). If things work well, the throw would extend the loose line to the max, this time over the receiver's shoulder.  In this test; Pass!  Bryan requires this "recover and heave again" task as part of the deckhand skills test for setting up and throwing a heaving line- from personal experience-lessons learned.