Murphy’s Law

Alice and I decided last minute on Saturday to pop over to RYC to take Messing About for a bit of a shake-down.  A quick cruise around the Bay and home by 6. Nothing too ambitious. Messing About has been on the mooring for 3 weeks now but has yet to be sailed. We rigged the main and raised the foresail on the furlex, cranked up the outboard, dropped the mooring and got under way. Problem #1: Someone who will remain nameless but was not me, didn’t attach the halyard shackle correctly and on raising the main, the halyard went three quarters of the way up the mast with out the main attached. Luckily I could reach it with the boat hook by standing on the boom. Unluckily I could not get a purchase on the shackle despite squeezing it against the shroud so it stayed flapping in the breeze. We returned grumpily (me being very grumpy actually) to the mooring. My effing and blinding at the situation didn’t seem to be helping bring the halyard down. As I foraged around below for something to get a hook on the halyard, my calmer and much better humored spouse had a go and successfully got a grip on the shackle dropping the halyard down low enough for me to get hold of. Off we set again. As we headed up wind, I had another go at raising the main. Problem #2: The recently cleaned and oiled winch came part. It lifted off it’s base and fell apart like a cheap toy. So much for my adventures in boat maintenance. Problem #3:  Just as this happened, the “beloved” outboard died. Not positive why but I believe that it was as my eternal partner in life pointed out earlier that the gas line was a bit twisted up.  Should have listened to her. Ever was it so. This was a significant issue as the wind was up to 10-12 kts, we were still among the moored boats and the wind was pushing us onto a lee shore. I quickly unfurled the genoa. Problem #4: Someone who shall remain nameless and this time not Alice, had run the sheets inside the shrouds when they needed to go outside. Put it down to rustiness. It’s amazing what you can forget in seven months of not sailing. The genoa was not enjoying trying to get inside the rigging. What a bloody mess. I moved like my ass was on fire and re-ran the sheets. Within about 30 secs we were sailing nicely off the genoa. We squeezed through a couple of moored boats and headed out into the bay. Problem#3 Reprise: I re-started the motor, furled the genoa and we put into the wind to raise the main. Again as soon as we tried to raise the main, the outboard died. They must be cosmically connected. Genoa back out again and tacky-tacky around for about ten minutes to get clear of anything that needed to be gotten clear of. The engine was re-started and seemed to be OK. By this time we were running out of time and most of all a sense of humor.  We decided to call it a day and returned to the mooring licking our wounds. There’s always next weekend