Hoisting the sails and first sailing

While working with the cockpit we also decided it was time for hoisting the sails for the first time. First one was the furling head sail. We hoisted the furling head sail a calm evening.

We noticed that the sail was to short, so we needed a extensing on the halyard.

The following day we decided to hoist the main sail and try sailing our boat for the first time.

We sailed around in central Stockholm for a while. It was Petras first sail ever  and Thomas first sail in a couple of years. The wind wasn’t very strong which was perfect for our first sail. Our sailboat isn’t exactly a racer but we moved forward pretty okay even though we have a lot of things growing on the keel and we weren’t able haul the sails properly since our winches needed some service.

We hadn’t hoisted the mizzen sail yet, since we had noticed a damage on one of the lower shrouds for the mizzen mast.

We ordered a new shroud and when it arrived we mounted it and could hoist the mizzen sail.

It will be exiting to test sailing next time with the mizzen sail. Apparently the mizzen sail is really good hoisting first to set the sailboat in irons and then the rest of the sails can be hoisted.

Finally we added the boom covers for both the main mast and the mizzen mast, which made the boat look like  a proper sailboat!

Otherwise we have started painting the cockpit and will soon be able to show some before and after pictures of the cockpit! We are also working with renovating the cabin door and will add a blog post about that soon. But this weekend we will take a break from working with the sailboat to celebrate Swedish Midsummer, in our opinion the best holiday in Sweden. If you don’t know what holiday this is, just google Swedish Midsummer.