Busy busy

Let's see. I've been a busy sailor the past few weeks. Got a used winch at one of those marine salvage places (oh my goodness are those places fun AND depressing: so many wonderful parts, so many dead boats). Rebuilt it so now it is ready for duty on the port-side cabin top where it will help out with the mainsail reefing.

May 2018 update: I didn't like the look of the pawls in the winch when I got it apart, so I parlayed it (and some cash) into a pair of healthy Harken 16 self-tailing winches.

And yesterday Ellen helped me get the boom onto a pair of sawhorses so I could figure out the lines that run inside. Man, off the boat the boom seems enormous. Working from the initially-inexplicable jiffy-reefing diagram I found on the Isomat Spars website, I figured out how to rig the lines for two reef points. It's a neat system, hopefully it will work smoothly because it will be really wonderful to be able to reef from the comfort and safety of the cockpit.