[Rhodes22-list] Welcome and Ready to sail!

[Mary Lou Troy]

Wow. So many new Rhodies! Thanks all for speaking up and welcome to the list!

Hope everyone is in a position to take advantage of the great weather 
we are having. I think Fretless is finally ready to go.

We spent the afternoon dropping the mast (the system worked like a 
champ as usual) and installing the halyard restrainer for the 
Schaefer SnapFurl. Looks like the halyard restrainer fixed our 
furling problems. We'll know for sure tomorrow when we go for a sail. 
Sometimes you are just plain lucky. We already had a halyard 
restrainer for the UPS and were worried about the real estate at the 
mast head. Our steaming light is way up there in the same vicinity 
too. Turns out that the two halyards fit easily through the new 
larger restrainer AND the new restrainer could be installed using the 
screw holes from the old restrainer! A test run in the dock had the 
sail furling and unfurling more smoothly than it ever has.

If you missed the background on this - last year was the first year 
we had the Schaefer unit. When we installed it, we thought we would 
first try it without the restrainer but then at the last minute 
decided to swap halyards with the UPS and ended up with the jib 
halyard being run through the restrainer for the UPS. When we put the 
mast up this year we had the halyards where we wanted them with the 
UPS halyard through the restrainer and going back to our original 
idea of trying the SnapFurl unit without the restrainer. Bad idea. 
Immediate crankiness and a halyard wrap. I think the 2 halyards will 
be fine going through the same restrainer. There is plenty of room 
and neither gets used all that much.

Now we are one step closer to our stated goal of sailing more this 
year than last year. Truth to be told, It won't be too hard.

Mary Lou
1991 R22 Fretless
Rock Hall, MD