For the last few days we have been servicing our winches. There are a total of 9 winches on board, 6 self tailing, two speed winches and 3 two speed, non self tailing ( they are on the mast.) They are all Barient winches, 2 are quite large and they are 28 Barients and they rest of the self tailing are 23 Barients. I took apart a 23 first and Barry tackled a 28. We both followed the directions very carefully, Barry had to spend a little more time putting his back together as it was much more complicated and had 3 sets of gears which had to fit together. The next day we switched and I tackled a bigger one. I put one set of gears in the wrong order on the deck so when we had put it all back together it would not work, damn, we had to take it back off the deck and fiddle with it , put the bottom back on and it still didn't work. Then Barry remembered that I had switched the gear casings so we took all the gears back out and changed casing and VOILA it worked. It was a relief when it finally worked. Barry did the three winches on the mast today and he said that they were quite easy.

The winches were in pretty good shape, there was some grease in them, although in some spots the grease had become gummy and needed special attention to get it off. The 23's that are on the top of the cockpit roof were in the roughest shape. There was lots of salt in them and some of the brass parts showed some pitting, nothing to worry about as long as we continue to do regular maintenance on them. The palls were all in pretty good shape except for one set that Barry had to scrape the crud off of to make sure it would catch again. We were both pretty much covered in grease and oil by the end of the day, but after potting I didn't think the mess was too bad, except trying to get it out from under your fingernails is a real pain. .

Today I went over to Lorna Hughes house and sewed up some new curtains for the aft cabin and over the quarterberth. Living on board at the dock you feel like you are in a bit of a glass bowl, someone can walk up beside youand peer in the portals. Mostly people aren't so nosy as to peer in, but it is coming up to busy season here and you can get " dock gawkers" cruising around the marina. Curtains are just a nice touch. I attached them with this curtain wire through the top, you cut off the wire in the length that you want and then screw in an eye and then put a cup hook on the wall and you are in business. I put weighted curtain hanging stuff in the bottoms to make them hang nicely. I have kept with the blue and yellow colour scheme. I took a bit of the material Mom had used to make the hanging curtains to match the colours. It's pretty loud, but I really like it and it's me!