ORION: Life's like that!

Repairing the main sail...

Well, if you read our blog entries you'll know that we blew the main sail last time around, Sunday, March 28 to be precise. Of course these things always happen when you have made plans...arrrggghhhh! In our case we planned to meet our friends on Andariego on Wednesday to spend the Easter week at Coffin Island and possibly Guanica. We are the luckiest persons around though, because there is a sail-maker right across the street from the marina! "Tradewinds Sails and Canvas" is owned by Marianne Peiffer and her husband Frank and we have become friends since living permanently on Orion here in Marina de Salinas. The shop is closed on Mondays, so Tuesday morning I went to see them about repairing our sail. Good people that they are they squeezed us in for Wednesday although Marianne was leaving early Thursday :o) How kewl is that? We would only miss one day out of our planned mini vacation!

Wednesday morning Rick and I took down the main sail and carried it over to Marianne and Frank. Good news: the rip was repairable, the sail in otherwise okay shape, and they would be able to fix and reinforce everything, so that we could use it for another year for sure and maybe one and a half to two years. Great! Now we have a year to find a new sail or a very good used one...life is good! Marianne and Frank went to work straight away and by late afternoon our sail was in much better condition than it had been in years. The nasty rip right underneath the first reef point running across almost all the way to the other side had been fixed by their skilled hands, battens and batten pockets were added and fixed respectively, and they even added some funky red tell tales (sail/wind indicator ribbons). We paid and carried our treasured main sail back to Orion, where Rick would install it Thursday morning when the wind was down. I say treasured, because without the main sail we cannot really go sailing!!!! Thank you Marianne and Frank...you are treasured by us as well :o)