So Long Sweet Saralane

I spent a little (too much) time looking back over our blog posts as I thought about what to write in this post and a few things occurred to me in the process. 

First - without question, the best thing about our years of sailing Saralane are the friends we've made along the way. I'm tempted to write about all of them and include links to previous posts to revisit some of the times we spent together, but that would make for a REALLY long read. Beginning with our friends who waved us off the dock in Newport in the fall of 2010... to the friends who helped us get Saralane up and going again after Hurricane Irma in 2017... and all the friends in between, we feel so fortunate to be a part of this community. Some are settled back on land; some are circumnavigating and are on the other side of the world. Some we talk to weekly and some are gone forever. There are too many memories to count.

Second - we've had an ridiculous amount of fun. Lots of adventures and lots and lots of fun. What began as 'let's take a year off and go sailing' quickly turned into 'hey, this is really fun... let's keep going!'. And so we did.

Third - we were (relatively) young when we started this! The 'kids' (aka: anyone younger than us) we meet out sailing would roll their eyes to hear me say that, and our 90+ year old friends laugh when we say we realize how much older we are now. It's just the continuum of life and we are grateful to still be moving along it. That being what it is, we decided we were ready for a change.

With that bit of an intro I'll tell you that we've sold sweet Saralane. We hauled her at Independent Boat Yard in St Thomas in April and decided it was time to move on to something else. We spent lots of time spiffing her up before listing her and she was looking good when we left her with a FOR SALE sign on the bow rail.

Saralane for sale in St Thomas

It's so bittersweet. She's been ours for 15 years and we literally put our blood, sweat (Skip) and tears (me) into her. She took good care of us too. She was 'Expectation' when we bought her and she became 'Saralane' for us. I don't know what her new name will be but I hope she has more adventures with her new owner. 

The 'boat' key ring I got Skip when we bought Saralane in 2007

And yes, we have moved on to something else. Something else being a new (old) boat! Skip and crew sailed her to St Thomas and arrived this past weekend. I have decided to be true to my fair weather sailing self, and will fly down to join him. I haven't yet decided about continuing the blog since we'd no longer actually be "Sailing Saralane". But, there are sure to be more adventures and more visits to Barbuda on the new boat and I know you want more Barbuda photos. Right?!

Let me introduce you to the new boat... she's a beautiful Little Harbor '54 that we've named 'Wildflower'. We'll spend the season on her in the Caribbean and plan to bring her north in the spring. If you see us around... come say hello! 

Wildflower in the Chesapeake

'You belong among the wildflowers, you belong on a boat out at sea...
Sail away, kill off the hours, you belong somewhere you feel free'

Wishing all a happy and healthy new year.....

Rerigging Saralane

It’s been a long time since I (Skip) have contributed to the blog, so I’ll go over the re-rig/re-commission process that we went through several years ago.

You will recall that we spent the winter and spring of 2018 mastless and looking quite sad. Luckily our trusty Kubota diesel never missed a beat and we spent our time frequenting our favorite haunts in the BVI, finally hauling for hurricane season at Nanny Cay, BVI.

Stern to in Little Harbor, with half a mast

In November 2018 I delivered an Outbound 46 from Newport south and used the opportunity to put items aboard that were needed to complete the re-rig process. Namely a new furling system and a new stove. The old stove was original (1979) and the oven portion had given up the ghost and we found that a nice Eno three burner would fit nicely. Upon arrival, I found Saralane just as we left her 5 months prior – free of mildew, odors and bugs. While on the hard, I removed the old stove, painted out the space, fashioned new blocks for the gimballs, and dropped the new Eno in – perfect!

     

Post Irma, boat builders and marine suppliers were backlogged due to the sudden demand. This was true for Selden Mast, and potential shipments were many months out. We opted to wait until the 2018 hurricane season was over before installing a new mast and coordinated shipping with the local Selden dealer, who was also importing several masts. I had also arranged for several other masts to be sent to Virgin Gorda and the combined orders were put in a shipping container and delivered to Tortola. The local dealer, Wickhams Cay Rigging, took care of all of the import duties and handling on Tortola. Ultimately, the container arrived at Nanny Cay about a week after I did. With the help of the Wickhams and Nanny crews, the masts were unloaded and inventoried. Selden is a Swedish company and uses containers to move mast components. The maximum length is 40’ – the length of a container – so our mast (58’) was in two pieces and needed to be spliced. The Selden office in Charleston is very professional and completely assembles the masts in their shop, then disassembles and preps them for shipping. At the end of the day, all went well. The most difficult part was lining up the two sections on rickety, uneven sawhorses and pulling the two parts together – by myself. After a few starts, it all came together.

New masts unloaded

Saralane's new mast

Several days later we launched Saralane and motored her around to the bulkhead on the reclaimed land to the east of Nanny Cay. 

Old mast = trash

Old mast

I hired a local crane operator, and with the help of a few cruising friends, the old broken stub of a mast was removed and the new rig stepped – all that I had to do next was make up the StaLok ends to the shrouds. Selden was reluctant to swage the new turnbuckles on to measured lengths, and so supplied the lower end of the shrouds cut, and the turnbuckles supplied with StaLok mechanical wire fittings. I temporarily stayed the mast with halyards and went to work on the StaLoks. The first was a little worrying, but once I got the knack – all went well. We stepped just before lunch and I had the port and starboard shrouds done before cocktail hour. We have a 7 X 19 backstay bridle that also needed to be swaged to length, so I engaged the capable folks at Wickhams Cay to swage the wire. 

New mast is in

StaLok fitting

The last component was the headstay/furling gear, but I had made a commitment to do another delivery south from Norfolk but it was early December by now and I was running out of time. In the past we have kept Saralane at a slip next door to Nanny Cay at Manual Reef marina, so I moved her there (sans headstay) while I was on delivery and away for the holidays.

Fast forward to mid-January 2019 and we were back at Manual Reef and on board Saralane. All was well on board, there was even ice in the freezer! After doing another cleanup, laundry and some provisioning, we began building the furling gear. Manual Reef has a nice level concrete apron and elevated section that was perfect for putting the furling foils together. Selden has an excellent video that shows how to build the furler step by step. As with the mast stays, the furler had to be made to length that involved another StaLok – but by now it was fairly easy. 

Nice work space, tools ready, Stalok prep, read the manual!

Stalok adjustment, tightening, more adjusting, final fitting

All was going perfectly until the final step when we discovered the feeder for the sail was the wrong size – and we couldn’t proceed without the correct one. Luckily, Wickhams Cay had one but it was closing time so we couldn’t quite complete the job the same day. We finished the next day, and with the help of a few marina mates, we hung the furler and got the jib on. We were a sailboat again!

Wrong size feeder

Drawing an audience on the dock

Even this little guy wanted to help

But wait! On our first sail we found that the new to us backstay hydraulic cylinder was weeping slightly as was the hydraulic pump. Wickhams Rigging didn’t have rebuild parts so we made arrangements to have Island Rigging in St Thomas do the repairs – we could live with the weeps for a while. We made our way to St John (as planned) where we met up with Rob & Ellen on Miclo III and Steve & Eva on Foreva. Also in Francis Bay were Dave & Helen on Allegheny, the boat I delivered back in December. Dave had made arrangements for new electronics to be installed on Allegheny (all of the old stuff had failed on the way down) and asked me to oversee the work in Red Hook. This allowed us to take a slip for a week in Redhook and use the time to get the hydraulics serviced. With this completed, Saralane was now  100% and we were looking forward to the balance of the winter/spring to enjoy the BVI and USVI.

First sail with the new rig