Junior Captains Giveaway: If you’re reading this before Sunday the 25th, you still have time to enter our giveaway. We’re offering a real-life sail with us, plus a lifetime subscription to our Junior Captains program…Enter Here.

When I left you last, I hinted that we ordered new sails.

I told you that when we got to Marathon this summer, we sent our genoa up to Sail Care for repair. It was still being worked on by the time we arrived in Stuart, Florida for hurricane season, but with sails on the mind, I decided to give our main and mizzen a good inspection.

In addition to a softball sized hole in the mainsail that I patched a few months earlier, I found a dozen or so dime-sized rips and holes.

Awesome.

The timing was right to call the local guys at Mack Sails since I wanted to get a quote for the ever growing list of projects to be completed this fall. Just add sails to the list that already included new mizzen rigging, new radar, vhf antennas, wind generator wiring, etc.

By the time I’d given them all my wish lists, the quote had grown to upwards of $15k. So we hit the pause button on a few things and started narrowing it down.

As far as the main and mizzen, it appears that I hadn’t done a good enough job of protecting them from the sun the past few years. The sails had just become brittle and damaged. You could fold a piece of the sail in half and easily tear it with your fingers. No bueno.

We probably could have patched it up and gotten another year or so out of it, but there were no promises.

After receiving a quote for new sails from Mack, I got quotes from at least 4 other companies. They all came back between 15-75% more expensive. That, plus the fact that I’ve heard nothing but great things about them, going with Mack was a no brainer.

We’re 2 weeks into the 6 week lead time, so I’ll let you know how they turn out! (For what it’s worth, when I asked Colin Mack his experience with Sail Care, he didn’t have very nice things to say about their process. Oh well…I guess I’ll just have to see for myself how the genny holds up!) I’m getting Mack to replace all of our old mizzen rigging, and a few bits and bobs related to that, as well.

I also bought 300 watts of cheap solar I’m going to add to our current array (for a total of 752 watts!) in the next few weeks. We’re still holding out on the decision to purchase a new chartplotter though. #MaybeChristmas

Schedule update- I’ll be jumping on S/V Libra as crew in the Pensacola a la Havana race next week & Alli will be in Atlanta in sailing school…Lanier Sailing School offered to sponsor Alli with their ASA 101 class, so she’ll be all ready to sail without me! We’ll then spend a few weeks working on the boat before visiting my family for Thanksgiving. Shortly after that we’re crossing the gulf stream and checking into the Bahamas. Stay tuned!