Thursday 24 January Water, water everywhere

big yellow duck - symbol of Summer festival

There's one small disadvantage to anchoring in the city – we can't make water. There's too much dirt and pollution for us to run the watermaker. One option is to fill 25L jerry jugs from the tap on the jetty and bring it back to the boat in the dinghy, lots of carrying when you need 1000L to fill the tank, or you get up very early and take the big boat over to the tap and use a hose pipe which is what we did. The fish market pontoons are for smaller boats and we stuck out a long way but with no-one else about so early we were OK and had filled up, scrubbed the decks and were back on anchor just after 8am.

Craig swaging an end

It would been nice to have a snooze but there was an appointment with the rigging shop we needed to keep. On one his recent regular rig checks David discovered we had a broken shroud on one of the diagonals on the main mast. The rule is discover a broken strand and you have to replace that shroud and it's opposite or risk a broken wire. Sydney Riggers had given a competitive quote and were handily placed a short bike ride away.

This morning's appointment was to take the defective shroud and they'd make two exactly the same for us to fit.

transporting 2 new shrouds

It's interesting how much we learn and absorb hanging out with 'experts'. Craig made up the new shroud while we watched, giving David tips and sharing his knowledge. As a rigger he was straight forward and gave good advice on the tensioning. It's not the black art many companies try to suggest it is, ie they need to be paid to do something we can do ourselves. Indeed David, with my assistance, fitted and tensioned the two new shrouds in under two hours. Each shroud has to exert equal pressure pulling the mast down to each chain plate on the hull. Rigger's tip – just make sure the mast is straight. A kink indicates one side tighter than the other. Anyone watching us would have been amused as we squinted up the mast. Stood aft and lined up the mizzen with the main and called 'a little bit to the left. Stop.'. Move back to the bottom of the main mast and take another squint ' half a turn looser on the left. Stop.' Until we reached as close as it was possible to judge. Good job done.