Lines stowed in this manner look pretty, but will start to rot in a big hurry ii not perfectly dry.

The upkeep cost of a sailing boat can be kept exceptionally low if you are willing and able to do your own work. The most fragile part of your outfit is the suit of sails. How fragile it is depends upon the type of boat you have. If yours is a little general-purpose craft with a cat or knockabout rig, a good suit of sails should last you for 10 years, perhaps more. If, on the other hand, you are going in for parachute spinnakers, masthead-high Genoas, or even the regular sails in their light form, you may find the life of a suit of sails is not over a season or two before they have to be recut or repaired.

The most important rule of all is that sails must be perfectly dry before they are stowed. Dampness causes mildew and rot. Need it be said that stowed sails should always be covered? Light sails that are not left on the boat should be well dried and then stowed in canvas bags. Rats and mice abound around the waterfront and no better nest has ever been found for a mouse family than a bagged sail. There seems to be but one easy way to avoid damage by the gray beasties. That is to bag the sail and hang the bag from a rafter on a length of fine copper wire. Even then, the bag should hang far enough from anything else to obviate the chance of a rodent making a flying leap. Mice can climb ropes and twine, but a smooth, fine wire licks that method of approach.

Sails should be spread in the sunlight and allowed to dry out thoroughly before being stowed away.
 
Most boats have the regular working sails left on from beginning to end of the season. As soon as a trip has been completed and you are fast to the mooring, loosely hoist all wet sails and allow them to flutter themselves dry. The jib should be lowered and the halyard unsnapped from the head and placed into the clew. Hoist the clew until it is well clear of the deck. Take in the sheets on both sides until the sail is centered over the deck. Now stow the jib by folding it from alternate sides. Never roll it. When it is neatly but loosely collected, keep it in place with three or more stops. These are simple lengths of canvas that can be passed around the sail and tied with slip knots. On top of this, fit the jib cover. This should lace around the forestay so that rain cannot reach the end of the stowed sail. It should also come well beyond the clew. The cover must not be rolled around the sail. It is simply placed, tent-like, over the sail and lightly tied to prevent its blowing off. Keep it sufficiently open on the bottom so that air can get into the sail. Most jibs can be removed so easily that it is often simpler to unsnap them from the forestays. Such a jib can be taken home or to a boat-house locker and stowed in a clean, dry place. If the boat has a cabin, the jib can be stowed below provided the cabin isn't so tightly sealed that it becomes a humid oven during the time the boat is not in use.

All running rigging should be neatly coiled and lashed to the standing rigging or to the spars.

Loosely tie the sail cover in place, leaving the bottom open enough so air can get into the sail.
 
Stowing a mainsail is almost the same as stowing a jib. As the sail is lowered, the boom is supported by the topping lift unless it is a very small and light spar. The boom crotch should be rigged and the boom lashed in its jaws. The perfectly dry sail is then accordion-pleated over the boom and made fast with a few stops. The sail cover is loosely hung over the sail and boom. If gaff-headed, the peak halyard block should be unshackled, the gaff stowed on top of the canvas, and the sail cover placed over all. Carry the peak halyard block to the mast or shroud and make it fast until again needed. Sometimes the block is kept in place and the halyard is slacked off until it can be laid under the stops and carried to the mast.

All running rigging should be neatly coiled and lashed to the standing rigging or spars to keep it out of puddles. In most cases, the coils can be stopped to the boom, where they get ample air circulation. Lines thrown in heaps are signs of poor seamanship at any time, but especially so when the boat lies at anchor.

One word of caution in regard to sails. A new suit should never be stretched out to full size until many hours of service have passed. If you have stretched your mainsail to its limit along the boom, it is well, under any conditions, to slack off the tack. With new sails, an excellent idea is to stretch them but half an inch or so each day. Make a pencil or chalk mark on the boom so you can avoid hauling the mainsail out of shape until the canvas has set itself.

Hull upkeep during the season should be limited to painting and varnishing as required. It is not the province of this book to go into major repairs caused by damage. In the case of a racing boat, she may have to be hauled several times during the season to smooth up her bottom and apply a new coat of racing composition. Many racing owners haul small sailboats out of water whenever they are not being sailed. The idea is to keep them from soaking up a few extra pounds of water. Such fussiness is silly unless your only aim in having a boat is to race her.

The big jobs of maintenance are supposed to face you in the spring. That idea is crackpot, for fully half the annual overhaul can be done during the late fall and winter with the result that you'll get overboard weeks ahead of the others who, like the Capistrano swallows, never show up at the boatyard until a specific spring day. If you lay your boat up properly, there will be little to do when the weather turns balmy again.

Unless you live in some section where there is no winter, you must haul in the fall. Strip the boat of everything movable. The sails and all running rigging should be dried, cleaned, and stowed in a damp-free, mouse-free place. Take out the mast if possible and have it stowed in a shed where it can be supported horizontally at frequent enough intervals so it cannot go out of shape. If the mast must stay in the boat, you may be up against it to remove the halyards. One stunt, if you can make a neat long splice, is to substitute some old line for the rigging aloft. If the boat is big enough and has a good stout spar, you may have a gantline. This is a heavy line rigged through a substantial block at the masthead. Its object is to provide a means by which you can be hoisted up the spar in a boatswain s chair. You can use the rig for reeving off all rigging, inspecting and oiling upper blocks, and varnishing the mast. Don't monkey around with this sort of thing unless you are sure the mast, the gantline block, and the gantline itself will hold your weight.

When you have your boat hauled, make certain that she is blocked up under her keel at not more than six-foot intervals. Inside ballast should be removed and stored. There must also be blocking under her bilges so arranged that it cannot slip out of place and allow the boat to fall over. Never allow anyone to support the hauled boat by shoving a brace under the half-round sheer molding.

Clean her off outside just as soon as she is out of water, while the bottom is still wet. If the bottom paint is in bad shape, replace it at once. If possible, remove the centerboard. The inside of the centerboard trunk is subject to the constant chafing of the board and the chances are that the paint has been worn off. Repainting this is not an easy job, for the slot is seldom wide enough to insert a brush. About the best idea is to screw a board with a cork-plugged hole over the slot on the outside of the boat. Make it a tight fit even if you have to put a thick canvas gasket in the joint. Get a can of bottom paint and pour it in the trunk. In some yards, they have cans of paint that you can buy for this special purpose. After the paint has been in the trunk for an hour or so, pull the cork and drain it off. The excess can be used for regular painting of the bottom.

Decks and sides must be painted or var nished. The best time to do this is in the fall when there are no flying bugs to get stuck in the coating and die deaths as miserable as the job will look. Stick to the idea of a fall painting even if you have to put on one clean-cut coat in the spring.

The boat should be covered for the winter unless you are storing her inside a building. There are various forms of winter covers, but the idea most commonly used is to put up a rough lumber framework much like the roof of a house. The "rafters" bolt to the ridge pole and lash to the deck edge. Let them extend a few inches beyond the hull all the way around. Cover the entire erection with a heavy tarpaulin. It is always better to make the tarpaulin fast to weights, or to stakes firmly driven in the ground, than it is to allow the canvas to wrap around under the hull. As was the case with sails, you want air, but not snow or rain, to reach every portion of the hull. Hatches and doors should be open whenever possible. At bow and stern, your cover will leave two triangular openings. You can bring the cover together to close most of the space, but do not under any conditions prevent the circulation of air.

One method of hauling a boat. This boatyard uses an old telephone-company pole-setting truck.

Keel and bilge blocking should be arranged that it can't slip and allow the boat to fall.

Clean up and varnish, or paint, the spars. Go over the entire inside of the hull and remove the gunk, hairpins, and cigarette butts you will find rusting and rotting in the bilges. Wire rigging can be treated in several ways. Some owners wipe it down with machine grease. Others use a mixture of varnish and lamp black. The big idea is to protect the fine wires from rusting.

Slack off all turnbuckles and thoroughly grease the threads. Take up on them just enough to keep the rigging from wobbling around.

As soon as the boat is hauled, clean her off and brush on one or two new coats of bottom paint.

Improperly covered boat. The tarp should be carried down a bit past the edge of the deck.

Never forget that a hauled boat depreciates faster than one that is in service. The natural place for a boat is in the water where she is supported evenly. A hauled boat must inevitably sag out of shape. This is particularly true of a boat stored outside and blocked up on ground that will heave or sink from the action of frost. Have you ever walked across a field in March or April when the frost was coming out of the ground? If so, your Number Nine brogans have sunk several inches into the jelly-like earth. That is the same sort of stuff which is supposedly supporting your boat.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...