It was epic, I gotta tell ya.. six of us, just the conditions made it so. This Saturday was supposed to be another washout, the third in a row. Rains to start first thing in the morning and predicted all day long. The official call to postpone went out to the six volunteers who signed up, with a option to come aboard anyway and we would make a decision whether or not to proceed with lowering the Main Mast gaff and boom to the deck, based on actual weather conditions.
Not expecting many, I boarded early at 0830 to make some coffee and lay out the donut assortment on the saloon table. Tony Marchesani was already on board when I arrived. The first setback was discovered. No electrical shore power to the schooner. The circuit breaker at the pedestal kicked out, as it seems to do each week. Without it, we couldn't boil water for tea or cocoa,, or brew coffee, anything warming, let alone the little space heater under the saloon table to take the chill out. Three separate attempts to reset the pedestal circuit breaker finally resulted in a durable connection.
As coffee was being brewed, Danny Johnson came down the dock with tools and lumber to finish off the low step-up platform to the gangway he had started last week. Behind him came Wayne Burdick, and Scott Cross. The rain hadn't yet started, and looked to be iffy for the next hour, so, around 0900 we mustered at the Mainmast and discussed the project to take down the gaff and main boom to the deck, before any rain started.
Everyone seemed willing to get something done. At that time Helen Fogarty appeared at the dock, a sailor and friend of Danny's, she'd come down to learn more about the schooner, maybe volunteer. All total that was six willing deck hands-two short of what would be a comfortable crew for the job, yet we could still make some progress. With the rain still off to the west somewhere, we dove in.
We made short work of getting the gaff down onto the deck port-side. While Wayne cut the parrel bead string to free the jaws off the mast, Wayne and Tony cast off the throat and peak halyard coils, and stood by to lift the gaff a few inches off so Bryan and Scott could pull the gaff out and over to the port side. At Bryan's command, Wayne and Tony lowered away together, and the gaff slowly lowered and settled snugly against the bulwark between the riding bitt aft and the port side Main pinrail.
Now the rain was starting to appear, first sprinkles then filling out. But we were fairly charged up, and without discussion, jumped to the Main boom. We had, earlier at muster, already discussed how we would loose and maneuver the massive spar off the mast, over to starboard, then lowered by combination of throat and peak halyard and boomlift. It was going to be a complicated, highly coordinated effort, requiring all of us to perform multiple tasks.
While Scott walked aft to downrig the boom's port and starboard quarter tackles, Bryan climbed down below into the forecastle and tossed up to Helen on deck, the two coiled mainsail vangs, to be used as tag lines. Helen and Danny made one end of each vang line fast, one to the boom's tack iron, and other to the mainsheet collar, running the lines onto the dock. Bryan and Scott created a sling at the booms midpoint and bent on the two peak halyard blocks.
Rain was steadily increasing, so we paused to zip up foulies, or throw our hoods over. Wayne went further, donning his bottoms,, an additional step I later wished I had taken.
Largely heedless of the rain coming down we were all in the same groove. With Helen on the forward (throat) tagline, Scott aft on the boom sheet collar tagline, Tony and Wayne on the Peak and Throat halyards, Bryan , Danny, and Scott on the aft tag line attempted to pull the boom's jaws aft and away from the mast. Didn't budge. Someone,, Danny or Wayne suggested a handybilly tackle for added purchase. First, Bryan directed that each boom lift be slackened( their angle might be holding the jaws against the mast. No luck, so Bryan opened the lazarette, reached down deep and hauled out the largest 4-to-1 tackles in the pile. Helen rigged a sling over a piling aft, Bryan set an alpine butterfly loop in the boom tack lift tag line, Danny stretched the tackles out, setting the strop hooks of the opposing handy-billy blocks into the butterfly loop and Helen's sling on the aft piling. Three heaves on the handybilly running line and the boom's jaws eased off the mainmast table and floated free.
Now a new challenge appeared. With the boom lift slackened, the boom was held up by the peak halyard rigged well forward of the center of balance. the after end of the three-quarter-ton boom started settling down lower, pressing on the taffrail lifelines. Bryan and Wayne quickly teamed up on the starboard boomlift, tensioning it sufficiently to raise to boom end off the life line.
Now came the orchestration of the team, Scott and Helen on the dock applying force to pull the boom forward and outward, while Tony and Wayne on the two halyards slowly easing the boom downward onto the deck, Bryan nursing the one boomlift that was holding up the aft end of the boom.
At this point, we may have noticed that we were thoroughly soaked. I couldn't say for sure, because, instead of just dropping everything and scrambling down to dry cover in the saloon, this crew immediately set to coiling and hanging the heaps of tangled cordage that had accumulated all over the deck. Only when the deck was cleared; the last line was slipped over a pin, loosely dangling lazy jacks gathered and lashed together to the fife rail, only then did this excellent crew gather round the ladder and clamber down below into the saloon. Any onlookers from the docks or beyond, gazing our on the curious frenzy going on would've had to wonder at this obviously a professional crew.
Below decks, the boiler was activated for tea, coffee was poured, and donuts consumed.. I was afraid to turn on the little space heater under the table for fear of tripping the circuit breakers again, so no one really tarried. Too bad,, this was the time, as foulies were shed, where jocularity and expletives combined, and stories were borne, where the world shrunk for a few minutes to the saloon, the rain beating on the saloon butterfly hatch, and the shared hardship of shipmates. Cool.
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