Whew, all done! The weather really wasn't on our side this morning for the haul out of Bobato. But we managed to unstep the mast without any major problems. Except we broke a piece of plastic in genoa tube. Oh well, too bad... The haul out was done fairly quickly by the crane operator Mr. Nice French Guy. And then after a good wash down of the hull and all that was left to do after was to transport Bobato to dry dock yard.
My friend Pascal came this morning to give me a hand. We step up under the hand crank crane in port in order to unstep the mast. I tied an extension line looped up under the spreader bars to keep the mast safely in place. Then we started to undo the turnbuckles. Everything went well up to this point. I started to crank away to slowly unstep the mask. Pascal kept a close eye on the mast base, just in case. Within several minutes the mast was gently placed on deck. Then we set sail, rather we powered up the motor to head for the haul out crane. On arrival, we tied up and waited for the crane. Once everything was in place, the haul out took about 2 minutes to put Bobato back on her trailer. Pascal and I continued to clean the hull by hand using good old fashion brushes. Wouldn't you say that this boat is a bit pampered? Finally, to finish up I secured the boat to the trailer with straps and hooked up the trailer to Pascal's 4x4 for the 300m trip to the dry dock.
During the winter, I just wanted to do a few small, quick and easy projects in the warmth of my apartment. Fortunately or unfortunately (all depends one's point of view), winter has arrived in the Savoie and it's cold even under the tarp... It doesn't matter because today I rolled my sails around large PVC tubes for winter storage. Rather than storing them folded in their bags, my new sails will spend their first winter around a tube. Nothing could be simpler and it only costs 12EUR. What a deal!
3 PVC tubes and 2 coupling sleeves 10cm in diameter
The mainsail
OK, it's all wound up
