269: WHEN RIGGING FAILS

Well, if we didn't have a crack, we got one now. Oh, we just broke the thing. I quit. Sorry. No boat project goes as planned. Hello, everyone. As you all know, we had a rigging survey completed at Turtle Key a couple of months ago, and the rigger found a few things that we need to pay some attention to. So I'm going to go through three of those with you and show you what we did to fix them. The first one is our shroud cover. We have water collecting in the bottom of the shroud, which is really bad for the swage. So we needed to figure out a way to pick up the shroud cover, which we have done with zip ties. Before I added the zip ties, the water would pool inside this shroud cover and keep the swage underwater, which was really bad. So all I did was add a couple of zip ties, and they sit in such a way where the water, as you can see, can come out. So now we have no more issues with water pooling in the shroud cover. I know the shroud covers are a little bit of a controversial piece of equipment. And because we have ours on now, we're not going to take it off. But maybe when we change the rigging in the next year or two, we will remove it. But for now, we're just going to keep it. And that fix with the zip ties is enough to keep the water out. So problem solved. Secondly, we need to change how we are rigging our main halyard in the masthead because the shackle is actually elongating the pinhole, which is a problem. So we have a solution for this. Thanks to Chris on sailing vessel Heliotis. Thank you, Chris. Brown's going up the mast today to make some measurements, and we'll show you the end result to fix that problem. You're not only a beautiful woman, but you're a very powerful woman. Wow, it's so nice up here on top of the boat. And one thing of particular concern is this hole right here that's been elongated. You can see that's happening right there. So we're talking about taking a bolt and putting it through here all the way through the top row that hasn't been compromised. And have a shackle and we'll go up underneath this bolt and hold on to the halyard. The last issue that we have is a much bigger one, and that is our martingale. How many of you actually even know what a martingale is? We certainly did not, but we have a broken wire on our martingale, and we need to change that out. Thanks to Chris on Heliotis again. We have a great rigger here in Shelter Bay Marina, and we're going to have him change out our martingale. So we'll show you that process because it's a new one for us. We have not done anything like this. We're going to learn a lot from this process. This is a bigger job than we anticipated. Steve's going to have to release the tension on the shrouds and actually pull the mast forward a little bit to take the tension off the martingale and the front cross beam. So we're glad that it is a calm day for him to do this work. And it's going to be really interesting to experience this and see how the martingale and all of our rigging kind of fits together. While it's not a good thing that the martingale is broken, we're looking forward to learning something from it. Steve did say that it's really unusual for a martingale to break. He thinks that at some point there was a significant impact on the port side of the boat in the front, which we can confirm because Brown has had to fix the gel coat that was damaged there. And that also happened in charter. So unfortunately, buying a charter boat out of Grenada has really cost us a lot of money and time and headaches because of how poorly those boats were maintained and also the number of collisions that the boat had. It's really unbelievable. We need to do a follow-up video on would you buy a charter boat again because I think we have a little bit of a different opinion at this point. I need to mark this because we're going to use a different one anyway. We need a different one and we're going to just look by eye because this thing must be completely for you. Look from the bottom. Okay. It must be completely straight. Really? Yeah, I know your eyes very good. Look, you get to learn so much with blown away here. Yes, yes. Disaster boat. Steve, how do I know if this turnbuckle is worth keeping? Well, okay, stop. What I was thinking of here is it'll save us time and you money. Okay. If we don't take that pin out and we only take that pin out and we reuse this turnbuckle. Is the turnbuckle in good shape though? Turnbuckle is fine. Turnbuckle is very seldom a problem. Let's say gall up on the thread here, which this hasn't done. An open turnbuckle, you have stress cracks in the corners. Yeah, yeah. And this doesn't. Okay, great. Yeah, let's do it. We could leave that in place, reuse the turnbuckle because the thread should be the same and it'll save us one pin removal. Perfect. Because I hate removing both these pins. What sometimes happens is the... Oh my gosh, look at this. The two holes move slightly. Sometimes they move like two millimeters apart and then you can't get the beam. They have to pull the two holes together to get the beam in there. Okay, so we have one out. Now we can go and tackle the... All right, we screwed it up enough. There's no turning back now. You know, Steve, now's the time where you say, oh, sorry, I'm doubling my rate. Yeah, you're right. I quit, sorry. Eric, do you think you can do this now on your own? Sure. Sure thing. So easy. It's so easy to fall in love. Okay, can you do that? Down, yeah, down. Let me just see what's turning. Is it your nut or my nut? I think it's my nut turning. Turn again. No, it's your nut. Your nut's turning. Well, if we didn't have a crack, we got one now. I have to try and pull this thing up somehow. Well, no boat project goes as planned. What we're doing now is trying to loosen up the corrosion. Wiggle the beam a bit. Okay, I think it did move a little bit. It's caught in the beam here, it's not caught in here because it's actually the whole pin, as you can see. Wiggle it again. You see the whole thing and the pin is moving together. So it's being held in here. Wiggle the beam again. Eric, look at that form. Oh man, oh man. You're killing it. Go in the jewelry business. Where's the other nut, the original one? That's the way it works, right? Nothing. You got all that stuff. Turning, turning. No worry. It's turning. You're moving it. The nuts are just turning tight on the thread. Okay, let's take it out. Now this pin doesn't turn. Oh, yeah. That's a good sign. Oh yeah, that's a good sign. Oh, yeah. That sounds good. Oh, we just broke the thing. Now we're in trouble. That's what we were hearing. Go back to it. Our hero. No, it's moving. I can see it moving on this side here. I think the beam raised. Okay, is it holding now? Yeah, I know what the problem is. What is it? It's your force tag. Thanks to Steve and Anthony's persistence, they were finally able to get the pin out. It took about four hours. And the good news is that while we were going through the Panama Canal with friends, the martingale was fully replaced. So we now have a brand new martingale. And thankfully, we are done with that process and we're ready to get underway. Huge thanks to Steve and Anthony for their work. If you ever need a good rigger, come to Shelter Bay. Steve does a great job. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoy videos like this, please subscribe. Hit the like button and share this with your friends. We really appreciate it. And we look forward to seeing you next week.