What Goes Down Must Go Back Up!

On September 11, we motored from Troy to Catskill, NY and experienced for the first time the effect of tides and currents. Unfortunately, we just woke up in the morning and left the wall in Troy without looking into what the tides were currently doing. Turns out the tide was rising, which means the current was strong, and from the wrong direction, so we slogged through it, at times moving as slow as 3.8 knots. In normal conditions, we can motor at around 6 knots. It felt like we were hardly making forward progress at times!

Our destination was Riverview Marine Services in Catskill, NY, where we would finally have our mast stepped (put back up) and be a sailing boat once more. We spent the rest of the day (and night!) working on getting ready. Jim installed two new LED lights on the bottom of the spreaders so that if we want to, we can now light up our deck at night, which we’ve wanted for some time, and something much easier to do while the mast was laying on the boat! We also cleaned and replaced the bulb in the anchor light fixture, reinstalled the antennas at the top of the mast (marine VHF, dual band HAM, and wifi), and reinstalled the spreader boots and the wind instruments.

In the morning, after helping Hullabaloo with their mast, we moved Radio Waves to where the boom truck was parked and it was our turn! While still a scary process, this was somewhat less nerve-wracking then when the mast was unstepped. I’m guessing that’s because we didn’t have to worry about how well built the cradle was at this point. I still had fears of the mast being lifted up and dropped back down on top of the boat and ruining our dream! Silly I know, but I couldn’t help it!

And for those of you who’d like to see the process, here’s another little time lapse video for your viewing pleasure! 🙂 The whole process took about 40 minutes or so, but here it is in under 30 seconds!

Of course at this point, there was still quite a bit of work to be done, so we headed back to our slip and got to work getting all of the halyards, sails and lines reattached, tightening the stays and shrouds to make sure the mast was being held up properly, and hooking up all the wiring inside the boat. Feels good to be a sailboat once again!