With the old mast on the seabed and a new one at last on it's way, we sailed, well at least motored Ruffian to Whitby in readyness for it to be fitted. Whilst lifted out, making use of the one month’s yard time we had, we were able to start our preparation for our planned forth coming transatlantic race.

Whilst Ruffian was held  in the slings on the travel hoist we dropped the keel and resealed the hull/keel joint, withdrawing all the keel bolts two at a time for inspection, all proved to be in first class condition and were resealed and replaced, this in turn lead to a great deal of fairing in and whilst we were at it we removed the luminous orange anti-foul on the keel, which was costing us about £100 per year to maintain, and let’s face it, if the boat was upside down it would probably be because the keel had fallen off! (we will retain the orange rudder),this in turn lead to a massive amount of re-fairing on the keel until it was as smooth as the proverbial babies bum and re-painted with black anti-foul.

Next we removed  the ‘through the hull fittings’ which the seacocks are attached  to, which are held  by three nuts and bolts and replaced them as some were nearly corroded through, re-faired them in and touched up the anti-fouling.

With that complete our next project was to fit the wind steering system which we had purchased, stripped and refurbished throughout the lead up to Christmas, this neatly attaches by four superbly engineered ball and socket joints which has enabled us to remove it for bay racing, although we do appreciate it will have to be refitted to allow us plenty of time to practice with it.

Next up the whole hull was T-cut and polished until you could use the mirror like finish to shave in (Emma not me, I have a beard!) Followed by fitting the new graphics we had designed, made necessary because when we fitted the self steering it covered up the old name, across the transom.

The rush was now on to prepare the mast. The new LED tricolour and anchor light was fitted and wired, followed by the VHF aerial, wind hawk and wind instruments and lastly the back stay lifter. An oversight had led to the fitting of a 25mm spinnaker pole track, which unfortunately would not accommodate our pole end fitting, the easiest way around this was to replace the pole end fitting, which we did before fitting the two to one purchase system on the track.

The halyards had all been moused so it was simply a case of pulling them through and then it was up to the riggers to do their bit and so we left them to it, when we returned the following morning, there it was, standing proud, just needing the final adjustments, in the initial rig setting up, which we did before re launching the following day.

Our last problem came as we fitted the mainsail, having to replace the sail slugs with larger ones to prevent them coming out of the wider luff grove on the new mast, but after a few hours sowing, we were able to leave Whitby and had a brisk sail home to Scarborough.