To see as much of the world as we can,
Using the smallest carbon footprint we can,
Spending the least amount of money we can,
Making as many friends we can.

Team Red Cruising

Main Stackpack

Most folks only get to make one Sailrite Stackpack. We get to make two. Which -- if you like to sew -- might be a delight. We started small (with the 12' mizzen). Then we had to tackle the 16' main. Moving up meant a great deal of problem-solving. More than we expected.

Sixteen feet. Didn't sound all that big to me. It's bigger than the sewing table -- I got that. Bigger than any bed for which CA has made a quilt. There isn't really space in our apartment for this. So problem #1 -- how to stretch out 16' of fabric?

The secret? A lot of intermediate measurements and a lot of very careful rolling and unrolling to transfer the measurements accurately.

Problem #2 -- The stack has to be almost 60" tall at the forward end. The bolt is only 48" wide? What do do? That one's easy. Sew an extra 12" rectangle on the forward end. How long a rectangle? That's a little bit of algebra, but solvable.

Once we get beyond the hugeness issue, there's the final assembly problem to tackle.

One can't measure everything with enough precision to do final assembly. So there's a lot of finish-work that's best tackled on board.

Problem #3 is doing the finish work in a saloon that's maybe 10' long and 8' wide. Actually, this isn't a difficult problem. The measuring is done outside -- on the boom. Once measured accurately, the sewing is relatively easy. The 16' hugeosity doesn't matter

There's one problem that we just didn't expect going into this.

The front of our mast is decorated with a great deal of hardware. The Sailrite kit presumes that there's essentially no random hardware on the mast. We've got winches, two steps, and a ring for the whisker pole [and a partridge in a pear tree.]

The big fabric panel on the front can't easily be attached. Problem #4: what to do instead? We think that some good-old-fashioned lacing (or lashing) will be fine for securing the stackpack to the mast and still leave from for winches, halyards and steps.

Which leaves us with a final problem. The lazyjacks were rigged with immense line. Something like 5/8". What's more appropriate is something on the order of 1/4".

Problem #5: How much lazyjack line do we need? We know we need four pieces and we know that it's all going to be 1/4". But, we still have to carefully take one lazyjack from each side, measure, and the get some line cut that fits our requirements.

Red Ranger came with a mountain of line. All of it is either too large diameter or too small for this job. We have solutions to the last two problems -- we think -- we just need to put them into place.

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