Buying sails

I've really had my eye on buying sails from a UK sailmaker, but am alo less certain this week after a good friend of mine was quite badly let down by a well known UK loft.... Delivered horribly late, lost order, wrong spec (not triple stitched, missing one reef, wrong headboard).... And finally to finish it all off, when delivered, too small!

So, someone remind me why I shouldn't save £1000 and buy them from Hong Kong?

After all, the material is the same quality and lots of well known manufacturers use them...

I've also managed to buy a pair of sea sure cockpit eye bolts (the nice ones that clip down out of the way when not in use) for a very reasonable price.... Another winter job!

Sent from my iPhone

And another effort

A nice pic

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iPhone

Just bought myself an iPhone mainly for then navionics app.... Which is utterly briliant!

but just starting to appreciate just how much it opens the door to richer blogging and enhancements to the web site. I can now post pictures directly to photobucket and also place routes and geographically tagged pictures on the google map...

Expect all sorts of funky things from here on!

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end of the season?

Its got to that time of the year where we are wondering about what to do about bringing Morgana out over the winter.

Last year we were in for all but a long weekend, so this year we plan on taking her out for a bit longer, so that we can do a full clean and scrub, as well as get a few 'out of the water' jobs done like servicing the seacocks, and fitting the water intake for the watermaker....

However, I don't want her out for too long as it costs £75 a month for cradle rental... so I think the plan will be to lift her after new year, and keep her out until the end of Jan... even that will cost a fortune... not just the storage cradle, but loads of money for the lift in and out... about £600 in total....

We would look for some nice winter sailing, but last year it was just a long wet winter without hardly any nice weekends where we really fancied a sail....

I've decided not to drop the mast, but to get the standing rigging replaced with the mast up (if they'll do it), as that saves another £500... but it does mean that sometime over the winter, or in the spring, i'll have to go up the mast to fit the windex, and to remove the ST50 wind speed masthead unit, and then back up to refit it once i've (hopefully) managed to fit some new bearings.... I hope they work out OK, as a new masthead unit is outrageously expensive... almost as much as a new ST60 instrument complete, but with different plug styles, it would be a real pain to fit an ST60 unit.