Error mode detected.

Pathfinder project sail-fail.

So iv’e messed up, quite badly in fact.

Couple of days ago I was working away at the kitchen table workshop sewing up my new Thermarest based boat fender cover bags when there was a knock on the door and the DHL courier guy is dropping off what looks like a bag marked with a well known east coast sailmaker’s name all over it. As you can imagine I was a very happy chappy except that there wasn’t much I could really do that day as my partner was at work, which meant the car was there and because of that I couldn’t heave the Pathfinder up the drive.

In writing time, yesterday, I pulled the covers off, pulled the boat and trailer the short distance up the drive, even remembered to chock the trailer wheels this time and set-to getting the rig back up. Having stripped it of everything bar it’s shrouds I had the whole thing to set up again and my road stowage of parts was a bit less logical and organized than I thought it was….still haven’t found the gaff parrel. One weird thing was that when I came to slip the mast pivot bolt through the tabernacle cheeks and then through the mast the mast hole was totally rammed with what I can only assume is road dust….totally weird and I had to dig it all out before I could get the pivot bolt back through.

Another problem all day was that it turned into a hot, bright and windy day ; what should have been 6-8 Kn of wind was at least 10-15 and gusting higher which made everything difficult and irritating later on. I even finished the whole day with a near migraine and deep fried brain due to running in and out of the workshop all day….eyes must have been going from fully dilated in the cool and dark workshop to complete constriction in the sun and wind. Rough night afterwards too because my head was way too busy after trying to sort out my errors.

Anyway, enough faffing about and moaning.

To cut to the car chase and sex scene then my basic job that day, which should have been an enjoyable and video’d bending on of new sails turned into a minor nightmare when the mainsail didn’t fit and of course was flapping around in the wind. First task was to temporary lace the head of the main to the gaff and hoist it loose just to check the hoist position. First simple problem is that the length of the head of the sail was slightly more than the length of the gaff spar but the second, serious problem was that the luff of the sail was at least a foot and more too long for the hoist position. To get the luff even sitting in roughly the right position at the tack I had the gaff jammed up underneath the shrouds….way out of position.

So….I took a break and had a rethink. After a coffee break I stripped the sail off and laid it out under the build shelter using the cover tarp as a temporary clean floor ; also pulled up my Email to the sailmaker on which I had sent the sail measurements and then checked those against the actual sail. I wasn’t assuming an error on the part of the sailmaker – just checking everything to find out where the error was. After measuring the sail, which was exact as can be I re-hoisted the gaff spar with tape measures attached just as I did when I took the initial measurements for luff length and throat to clew diagonal.

I have no idea how I have made this mistake but my luff measurement, which is the easiest one to take, is almost exactly 500 mm too long. That’s not only a stunning error but a really weird number error as it’s often the case that measurements end up say a hundred millimeters out due to the way we tend to read things….iv’e also done similar things with decimal points. The only thing that I can think of is that I wrote or misread afterwards the measurement 3.3 as 3.8 and didn’t think to ‘check my check’.

The wooden fairing batten shows the shape, or at least the throat height that the sail needs to be, plus it would need a longer and steeper angled gaff. That part isn’t a great problem as long as the sailmaker can re-cut the head of the sail, because I can just get some timber and make a new gaff and this end I have the sail to directly take the dimensions from.

The good news yesterday evening was that when the obviously thermal driven wind died down a bit is that I briefly hoisted the jib and that seems to fit just fine but we couldn’t have it up for long enough for me to work out it’s sheeting angles. Given that my head was completely fried, both from the conditions, near migraine and far too busy a head it was just good to stop and take stock of where we were at.

With any luck the sail can go back next week if they say they can do the job and all that means is a delay on the launch and sail date.

Update.

I was quite surprised when the sailmaker said that it wasn’t a big problem and he even agreed that the way forward was to just correct the ‘wrong’ dimension so the sail has gone back to Norfolk and I have ordered a new piece of Douglas Fir to make a new gaff spar with.