Sail Sewing

Another uncomfortable and rough night. The wind picked up last night to gale force 8. Lots of rolling and pitching with swell and seas coming from different directions. But this morning the sun made it all look a little bit friendlier and now the wind is decreasing and backing to North-North-West. But still too rough for the bosun and his A/B's to work on deck. These days are perfect for small and old-fashioned maintenance jobs like sail sewing. Here you can see that new watertight covers are made from Flemish Linen Cloth. The one and only linen suitable for heavy duty work at sea. This job is quite easy because it is only double sided, but for the heavier jobs where three or even four layers are sewed together, you can not get your needle through the cloth anymore. Then they us a so called sail palm. A rawhide hand palm with a iron thimble inside. Sailors used them three hundred years ago and we use exactly the same tools ever since. Last two weeks the temperature dropped from 32 degrees centigrade at night to 12 degrees today. It is obvious that this change is way too fast for our A/B Joseph who is wearing a cloth over his head.