Only Two Thursdays and Two Saturdays remaining before September 20.

Labor Day Weekend is tough competition when an organization based on volunteers is trying to advance a project.  Add to that, the pressure of only a few remaining volunteer sessions remaining to get ready for the COI exam.

So it was great relief to see eight volunteers come down the gangway this past Saturday. It would be a full day. Thankfully, with passage of Idalia, the temperature stayed moderate, and  a light breeze made the day on deck tolerable. 

The immediate priority was to lift off the recalcitrant outboard engine from the tender, docked inside the marina, load it onto a cart and deliver it to Capt Davis' truck for drop off at a mechanic.  While Nate Mack, and Walter Barton dropped into the tender, and passed tools back and forth to detach the outboard from the tender's transom, Bryan Oliver, Jody Smith,  and Alex Lya, brought out a handy-billy tackle and rigged a hoist high up a floating dock pylon. 

Rigging up our hoisting tackle
 to get the outboard ashore.

Meanwhile, Doug Hartley and Dave started another project on deck, reinstalling a life ring marker buoy bracket he had fabricated. 

Once the tender was repositioned so that her transom was backed against the floating dock, directly under the rigged tackle, the crew rigged a bridle around the engine and carefully hoisted it off the transom, and onto a waiting dock cart. 

While Capt Davis, Dave Brennen and Nate others loaded the outboard into the back of Capt Davis' truck, the rest of the volunteers secured the tender than walked  back down the dock and mustered around the foresail, still rolled up on the deck from last volunteer session. 

Bryan explained the project that would take up the rest of the day, with all hands... bending on the Fore Sail to the fore mast gaff and boom with marling hitches.  

Bryan emerges from the lazarette
having just heaved two forty-lb spools
 of rope onto the deck.

Bryan opened the deck hatch in the cockpit, disappeared into the Lazarette and handed up two spools of 1/2'inch three strand rope. -and  measured out, cut and whipped. The rest of the volunteer crew unrolled the massive foresail on the deck, searched for and pulled up the four corners of the sail, sufficiently close to where they would be shackled or laced on. the peak, and throat on the gaff, and the tack and clew on the fore boom. 

Head of the foresail slowly being lashed
 up to the gaff, with crew lifting
and feeding it as each grommet
 takes a hitch. 

First, the sail was loosely suspended from the gaff by shackling on the throat, at the gaff jaws, and the peak lashed to the "peak of the gaff. Next, Bryan buntline-hitched one end of the measured-out lacing line, then gave a quick demonstration of how volunteers would line up on both sides of the sail and pass the line thru the  10 grommets along the head of the gaff, using marling hitches;

Bryan Oliver takes a turn with

 the foresail peak lashing to stretch it aft. 

finally tying off where the sail's peak was lashed to the end of the gaff. 

While Bryan headed off to Harris Teeter to provision for lunch the rest of the crew dug the massive pile of stiff canvas to locate the bottom, of "foot" of the sail with it's fourteen grommet openings, stretched it out and positioned it to be lashed on at the Tack and Clew irons on the Fore Sail Boom.

Following a cold-cut sandwich lunch on deck under the awning, the crew lined up with Bryan to start the more cumbersome task of marling hitching the entire foot of the foresail onto the boom. 

That done, and the afternoon waning, the last task would be furling the foresail.  It entailed pulling the entire mass of canvas over the boom to the port side, where all eight of us lined up to start stretching out and laying flakes down into the "skin created by the top five feet of the sail. We soon realized some problems. 

Bryan gives an impromptu Master Class
 in flat-braiding 6 feet of three-strand
 into a passible Sail Gasket.

Bryan, Jody, and Steve
 searching our sagging furl job for the missing flakes.

We were woefully short of gaskets, the long flat-braided sail ties used to keep the furled sail together  between the gaff and boom.  Worse, our lazy-jacks, the vertical lines suspended from the boom lifts to the  boom keeping the mass of sail from spilling onto the deck, had not been properly adjusted, causing one do-over, and a less than beautiful harbor-furl. In spite, the crew was able to form a semblance of a furl, in time for most of the volunteers to depart for their planned family Labor Day festivities. 

As Volunteer Days go, this one was exceptionally productive. 
With only two more Saturdays, and Thursdays until the COI exam, we will have to maintain that high level, maybe surpass it, if we're to be ready. 

That's not a lot of time considering the milestones that must be achieved before the 20th of September, and the onboarding of a Coast Guard Inspection Team:

• Fore Sail, lace the luff to the mast hoops- set up the lazy jacks
• Fore Mast, Linseed oil the mast;  Slush the Mast (Vaseline)
• Main Mast, Uprig the Boom lifts
• Main Sail, swing over onto the deck and bend on the main sail; set up the lazy jacks, furl the sail
• Get the Trash pump pumping properly
• Get the tender outboard working properly
• Dockside, Train in the three drills= Man Overboard, Fire, Prep to Abandon Ship
• Dockside, Train to manage docklines for casting off and docking; raising and dousing sail,
• Cast off and and train the above tasks while motoring and under sail.

Each of these require from four-to ten volunteers to complete.   Hopefully Volunteers can sustain, even increase attendance to make those milestones.