One of the constants of traveling by sailboat is maintenance – there’s always a backlog of projects that need to be done. So, we took time out of our busy schedule in Santa Barbara to tackle one of them – tightening our standing rigging.
Tightening the forestay to bring the rig back into tune
Standing rigging is the nautical term for the maze of wires that hold up the mast, and we replaced all of it as a precautionary measure before our sail to Hawaii this year. It’s normal for the wires to stretch a bit after some use, and we noticed some extra sag in Madrone’s headstay and intermediate shrouds on our last few sails. So, we tightened both on our last day in Santa Barbara and were interested to see if we could detect any changes in sailing performance with the rig back in tune.
Becher Bay in the morning light – the wisp of fog on the hills is what passes for bad weather here….
Our plan on leaving Santa Barbara was to sail as close to the wind as possible to test the tune. It was our lucky day – a close haul pointed us directly at Santa Rosa Island, and the wind built to a perfect 10-15 knots under sunny skies for our sail across.
After about 30 miles of beautiful upwind sailing, we dropped anchor in Becher Bay.
A full load on the Santa Barbara entrance buoy as we head out to Santa Rosa Island
