Sunday, the day of rest, but not for me. I decided to take on the task of making my Jib roller furler work. What I needed was about 4 hours of no wind to get everything done and the sail refurled (it’s a big mother sail too). First I got the line wrapped inside the furler (proper direction this time). Only problem is you can’t test it until you have the sail back up. 1 hour down and no wind. The raising of the sail I figured would take about 2 hours, it took 3. Now it’s 4 hours down and guess what, the wind started playing with the sail (not what I wanted). If the furler works, I’m home free, if not I get to lower the sail and start again on a non windy morning. It worked and I am so happy.

I have 2 more small projects and I’m ready to go. One is to fix the navigation light on the bow. They’re the red and green lights that let other boats visually know what direction you are going at night. The green light is on the right or Starboard side and the red is on the left or Port side. Non sailors sometimes ask how do you keep left and Port and right and Starboard from getting confused. My little mental game is to remember that left and Port are both 4 letters long, leaving right for Starboard. The same thing applies for the red and green. Since red has fewer letters than green, red goes with Port, leaving green for Starboard.

The next and last pressing issue is the bilge pump and I am going to resolve it for good. It seems to be one of those things that no one (even the Frenchman) can seem to get it right. For those of you who don’t know me that well, “The Frenchman” is a guy who has been working on Footloose from the beginning. His name is Jean Michel Raoult (sounds French) and he has helped me in too many ways to list.