We have had the silks aboard the boat for a year now and have used them a disappointing half dozen times. Why? In order to do silks aboard our boat we need consistently less than 7 knots. The silks are like a spinnaker and things get quickly dangerous when you get more wind or gusty wind. We don’t have less than 7 knots often and in the few times when we do, sometimes we have other things going on.
At the risk of sounding like morons, I will admit it took us a year to think about stringing the silks up in a tree on land instead of on the boat. Of course we’ve spent a lot of time around small motus with only coconut trees and scrub, which aren’t very conducive to hanging silks, so perhaps we can be forgiven our lack of insight.
In Mangareva at Motu Totegegie, we took some fishing line and a heavy stick, tossed the line over the tree, used that line to haul a stronger line with the silk up the tree, and put down a mat to protect the silks. With a bucket for rinsing feet and a few large pieces of cloth on the ground, we set up circus school on a motu. Friends brought flame juggling thingies, a slack line, and whatever that spinning plastic thing is on the left in the air and we went at it. Good times.
With representatives from the crews of SVs Penn Kalet, Pitufa, Estrellita and Black Pearl (left to right).
No comments:
Post a Comment