Spritting Mad

Many thanks and Kudos to Vickie in HR Parts once again, she finally secured Evenstar’s new bow sprit. This is a lovely piece of stainless steel that we spotted on the deck of Freight Train VII, a sister ship we ran into at Block Island last year.

Running the spinnaker has been a bit problematic – mostly where to tack it. I managed to bend the port anchor roller in a fit of stupidity last year while flying the kite (don’t ask). Going off the wind in light air there is no better way to sail; it’s fun and damn you look salty out there doing that on your cruising boat. It was fairly easy to do on our old boat which was very spinnaker friendly but the prior owner of Evenstar never flew the sail from what I could see. Sheets and blocks and gear are all there…except for the place to tack the sail on the deck.

Then…last summer…nirvana.

Isn’t that a pretty piece of kit from the bow of Freight Train? The quest was on…my rigger and I searched high and low for the maker of this thing. We each were on a separate mission at the Annapolis Boat Show last fall to find the secret maker of this mythical beauty – the owners of Freight Train didn’t know where it came from, it came with their boat the lucky devils!

The legions of non-sailors reading this may wonder why I am so excited by this. In short, it lets you take your spinnaker (that big parachute like sail) and stick it in front of your boat on something strong and designed to take the load. And it gets the sail out in front of all those anchors, bow rollers, rails and other pesky spinnaker eating devices.

After searching fruitlessly we dropped by the Hallberg-Rassy booth at the show to say hello, and what do you imagine was sitting on the bow of the only HR at the show? That sprit is an option now from HR. We ordered it in January, and unfortunately the shop that makes them didn’t complete it until June.

A week and a half ago it arrived in the middle of dinner on a Friday. The following Monday I brought it to the rigger’s and we opened the box. Only to discover that some genius at UPS had driven a forklift through the box and dented the sprit!

The good news is that on review it appears to be damage in a spot that does not bear a lot of load so it should not be affected in performance.

The bad news is we need to quibble with UPS about what exactly happened and who is paying for it. They wanted to “pick it up for inspection” and couldn’t tell me what would happen to if after they’d inspected it. Of course, given the difficulty in acquiring the first one I’m not about to give it to UPS so they can drive another truck over it to finish the job. More importantly if this one works I want to use it and not wait another five months! We’ll see how that all shakes out.

The biggest difficulty is explaining to UPS that while this is damaged it is a custom built part that is functionally OK, but cosmetically wrecked. It’s supposed to go on the front of a pretty boat and look…pretty!

It doesn’t look awful but it clearly doesn’t look right.