Readying for the season

     We have been so busy lately! I've been posting a lot of photos on Instagram, which I know show up on the blog, but I haven't sat myself down to write anything about it.
      Let's see about a recap of the past month.
We pulled Kyrie out of the water and set her up in the yard for what ended up being a week. The weather was terrible that week--rainy and windy--but we managed to sand her bottom, grind out blisters, fill some holes, coat her with three coats of bottom paint and do some work on the outdrive. She looks so much better now! Joe and I also managed to get the sails back on, although it took using our new-to-us mast ascender system to get up the mast and fix the roller furling system for the mainsail.
     A couple of weeks ago, we were trying to put the main back on and we just couldn't raise it back on the track. Joe had his suspicions that the set screws that hold the roller together had backed out. Lucky him got to try out the ascender (I already went all the way up the mast before we moved Kyrie back to Douglas!) and confirmed at least two of the sets had backed out a bit. The screws were all there, thankfully, but of course, we didn't have the right sized allen wrench to do the job. Joe somehow didn't have a metric set on Kyrie and that's what we needed. Once obtained, we used the anchor winch to haul him up the mast. He loosened the first two sets of four screws, applied Loc-tite, and screwed them back in. Then he called down to me, "Do you mind checking the upper two?" Apparently it was time for me to be mast monkey again.
     Up I went and had to twist myself around both the spreader and the stay for the Yankee sail to deal with the third group of set screws. It made me think of some kind of aerial acrobatics, although it most certainly wasn't graceful! The fourth set, nearly at the top of the mast, was much easier to deal with since I didn't have to contort myself into a pretzel to hold myself in place. Of course, when getting ready to descend, I broke the release cord! Thankfully, there is more than one way to get down the mast. Joe wrapped the spinnaker halyard we had been using around one of our winches and used that to get me down. My heart was pounding a bit as my feet touched down on the deck, but that job was done at last. Rebedding the set screws made a big difference. The main sail went up and furled more easily than it ever has before, so it was definitely worth the ascent and boat yoga involved.
     The next event for Kyrie's crew was the buoy races! Thankfully, no one on board got hurt like the last race for which Kyrie was committee boat. There were other mishaps, however. Two boats experienced a collision during the race, ripping out two stanchions. Later, back in the harbor, the boating community worked together when a sailboat ran aground. We used our dinghy to shuttle a long rope from the top of the boat's mast to a group of six people on the dock. They pulled the boat over to release the keel from the bottom, while a power boat hauled them away from the shore with their bowline. Success! It always makes me feel good to see people who don't necessarily know each other work together to help someone in straits.
     We're nearly done with our homeschool year here on Kyrie and I'm not sure who is happier about it--me or the kids. I'm not going to lie--it's been a rough year for us. It's been difficult to keep everyone on task and interested in what we have been learning. Next year, we'll be trying a different curriculum in anticipation for using it while we're cruising. I have high hopes, and we'll be starting a light load this summer to ease into it. However, for now, we have two more days on the calendar and I'm pushing the kids to finish strong. The incentive, I keep telling them, is that then they will be all done before we leave Friday afternoon to go to Taku Harbor! The first big weekend trip of the season is nearly upon us. Once that happens, summer fun will have definitely begun. Grandparents visiting, a big trip out to the coast again, Echo Ranch for both big kids, a trip to Glacier Bay.... This summer will go fast, and it's our last full summer here in Juneau.