PROJECT BOAT RESTORATION Summer on Maximus

Ali Wood ventures out on a summer cruise with the family...but not everything goes to plan

- Ali Wood

The lead-up to our family summer cruise aboard the PBO Project Boat had not been as smooth as I’d have liked. We had beautiful new lines and sails for our Maxi 84, built by T Sails, and the engine alternator was finally working after its refurbishment. But I still had to get the mainsail gate back into the mast to stop the sail slides from falling out when the sail is reefed or lowered. It should have been a simple job...

The sail gate was a brand new flush one from Seldén, as the original wouldn’t take the sail battens. Our rigger had fitted it originally but what we didn’t realise, before removing it to fit the sails for a boat test (PBO February 23), was that the screws were designed to be captive. Alas, in our rush to the 1630 lifting bridge, we’d pulled them out altogether. The screws dropped and made their getaway deep into the base of the mast-track. No amount of dangling a magnetic screwdriver would coax them out.

The following day, armed with a giant box of screws from my dad’s garage, I tried reattaching the sail gate with various-sized screws. It was tricky trying to poke them through the narrow groove of the sail gate and into the hole. None had threads wide enough for the hole. The ones I did finally manage to get in didn’t hold and pulled straight out again when I tried hoisting the sail.

After a couple of hours I gave up and went to a chandlery where the owner informed me that no screw would fit through that sail gate. Exasperated at my lack of DIY skills I called Chris Evans of XP Rigging. When he heard the screws had come out, he groaned. “They’re captive, how on earth did you do that? You’re going to have to replace the sail gate, fit it upside down and drill and tap new holes.”