The Weighting Game/Why I don't Sail With Coatracks

Yesterdays halyard weights got me into weight-crazy mode, so I decided to check in and see how our hardware was doing on the weight front. This was pretty easy, since all the old hardware is in one box, and all the new gear is in another. These boxes contain things like blocks, cleats, padeyes, brackets, mounting gear, etc. The fasteners are in another box (5 lbs).

The old gear wasn't all that bad, but came in at 32lbs. The new stuff, all Harken except for a few spinlock parts, came in at 18. Nice!

In doing this, I was once again stunned by the amount of bizarre crap that I see on boats. When I'm out working on other peoples boats, I always notice how much useless/extra gear they have on. I know how it happens, the "stuff accumulation cycle" but it's still shocking.

88 was kept pretty lean, but there is still quite a bit of waste. When I say waste, I'm referring to: a)extra weight, b)gear that interferes with the function of the boat instead of helping.

Here is a photo with just a few of the many things that struck me as odd/hilarious.

Top: Coat Racks. These odd items were throughbolted (and glued with 5200, you bastard) to the forward bulkhead. While they appear to be coatracks, they're actually for hanging sheets and other lines when not in use. Now, I know I can be picky about this stuff, but this is a failure on many levels. A) they're massively overbuilt. It's like 1 1/2" teak, glued on and throughbolted, with 1/4" stainless backing plates. B) They're in the worst possible location for... anything. They're one the back of the forward bulkhead. For those not familiar with the Shields that means that someone wanting to hang up a wet jib sheet to dry would have to get down on all fours, and crawl over/around crew gear, spinnakers, the mast, the anchor well just to reach these stupid little pegs. They weren't easy to remove (Damn you 3M 5200) but I'm glad they're gone. If we had sailed the boat, I know I'd be thinking about these heavy useless parasites. (ok, so I'm a weight nut)

Middle Left: Flagpole sockets. Ok, it's nice to fly the ensign. But why in the name of God, were there TWO of these on the boat? There is only one good place for the ensign (on the aft deck) but this boat had one mounted above deck, and one underneath that _TAPED TO THE OTHER ONE_. Huh? It wasn't mounted, it was just a pole socket taped to another pole socket, under the deck, where it couldn't possibly do any good. Did a previous owner assume these things get lonely or what? Baffled. Completely baffled I am.

Middle Middle: This was in the toolbox. It's a bilge drain plug. I like keeping spares on the boat. Spares of things I might need during a race. I know for a damn fact, that no one, not anywhere, has EVER needed a bilge plug drain fitting while sailing a Shields. Why am I so sure about this? Because in order to install it, you need to have the boat out of the water so you can drill a hole in the bottom of the hull for this thing. Also confusing.

Middle Right: I don't recall why this ended up in the photo. It's a crappy old slow heavy schaefer cheek block. I suppose it's here because I just plain don't like bad blocks.

Middle Bottom Left: Most people won't know this one, I do because I'm a rigger. It's a tool for pushing a splicing fid through rope. It lived in our bilge. There were no fids or other rope working tools on the boat. Can you picture a situation where you're heading out to the race course and get a burning desire to splice some rope. You've got (in your pocket I presume) a fid, a knife (you should actually), some twine, a needle and tape. But damn your lazy soul, you forgot a fid pusher! Oh wait, there's one in the bilge. Thank our lucky stars. GONE.

Bottom: I have no idea what this is for. I kind thought rum holder, but it was mounted (again with a bigass stainless backing plate) in the rear air tank. I though maybe it was a holder for the non-working flugelhorn thing we found (actually a noisemaking device which is a required bit of racing gear) but it doesnt fit. I tried a number of things in this holder. The best fitting object was a beercan in a foam coozie. Why it's in the aft tank I don't know. The only scenario that comes to mind would be: you're fixing a broken backstay pennant (this happens a lot on Shields), its hot, and you've stuffed your sweating body into the tiny cramped aft air tank. You're going to spend, minimum, an hour fussing with a nicopress tool to get the whole backstay pennant put back together. Why wouldn't you want a cold beer located at your feet! Actually, that sounds pretty good. I would really think about keeping this device for holding my aft-air-tank-work-beverage, if not for a)the heavy backing plate b)I've set our new backstay system up so that it's less likely to break pennants, and easily removable to replace it with a new all-swaged pennant.

While having fun with old crap, I also got a lot of work done. All of 88's flat (meaning not non skid) deck is scraped, and I've drilled out all the old holes for refilling. Next is to sand off the old non skid, and smooth sand the flat deck. It's really great to see big change on the boat. 4 hrs.


Just today, I've had two different conversations in which I was told that theres a surprising amount of people reading this blog, including someone who used to sail on this boat! If you're reading, please make a comment or two, just so I can know you're out there. I'm really curious to see who reads this stuff!