Aboard No Boundaries
July 19, 2009
When I was a child, I loved fairy tales, whether told in poetry or prose. Often when a situation developed in a bad direction, the storyteller would say things like, “Alas, poor Jack was doomed,” or “Alack, there was no hope.” That is how we feel after our attempt to repair the clew of our genoa.
The Sailrite sewing machine we purchased as part of our preparation to cruise is advertised with language suited to the Unsinkable Molly Brown. You would almost expect it to walk on water. We thought it would enable us to fix any sail problem that beset us as we cruised. We wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible, and we considered this sewing machine to be a key element in our bag of tricks.
Sadly, even Sailrite has its limitations.
When I undertook to mend the binding on the sail’s edge, my biggest challenge was simply to keep the fabric moving. Every few stitches I needed to drag that big sail forward again. Such exercise will keep you out of the gym, I can tell you. However, as far as the sewing machine was concerned, it was a trivial challenge. It stitched along merrily with never a shudder.
When I undertook to repair a binding on the foot of the sail with several layers of cloth that encased the leech line, that too, proved no big challenge for this sewing machine. I used double-sided seam tape to hold the layers in place, and the machine easily managed all those layers.
However, when it came time to make the most important repair, the replacement of the frayed webbing at the clew, the sewing machine hit a wall.
The machine has many wonderful features to enable it to work with layers and stiffness and so forth. I could completely disengage the presser foot and force it up another fraction of an inch in order to get the stiffened clew with its reinforcements under the needle. I could then re-engage the pressure and set a tight tension that would hold the stitching. I could not do any of this alone, because I could not hold the weight and the stiffness by myself and still crank the machine. Larry had to help me manage all that volume.
The powerful hand crank that comes with a Sailrite is a really wonderful accessory, because it gives us the flexibility to use the machine when no electric power is available, but in this situation, using the hand crank allowed more control as well. Sewing one stitch at a time, stopping after every stitch to be sure I was getting the desired result, was crucial in this challenging work.
Still, despite Larry’s help, and with his eagle eye on things, I was defeated in my effort to make this repair.
Before I asked him for help, I carefully placed my first strip of webbing and maneuvered all the pieces into the right place, gamely tried to roll that clew up to travel under the machine arm, and stitched carefully. On my third stitch, the bobbin popped out of the chase. I asked Larry to help me start over, and once everything was back in place, we opened the slot that hides the bobbin so Larry could see what was happening. I stitched one stitch, and all was well. I stitched one more stitch. Still good. Then I took the needle down again, and the bobbin popped out, preventing the needle from moving any further. Larry popped the bobbin back in. I stitched two more stitches before the bobbin popped out again.
It was time to ask for help. I called the Sailrite number, expecting to get someone who would tell me that I needed to make some small adjustment I had missed. Instead, after listening to my tail of woe, the support tech, actually the manager of the Annapolis store, told me I had hit the limit of the machine. It does a lot of things very well, but repair of the clew with its stiffened reinforcements covered with layers of cloth and webbing were simply beyond the capabilities of the machine. The behavior I observed was the machine telling me that it could not do what I had asked of it.
This was very discouraging news. Quantum Sails has a loft in Newport, and that is actually where we obtained the webbing I was using. Their sail maker had given me tips and advice that helped me to plan my work. But sadly, alas and alack, I could not complete my project. We could have engaged their services to make the repair instead of buying the webbing from them. At this point, it was obvious we had to go back and engage their services after all.
Larry and I shook our heads and mourned. I picked up my tools and supplies. Larry brought the machine below and put the sail away. I felt completely exhausted, as if I had run a long race, and I asked myself why I was so tired. Then I realized that it was the spiritual depletion due to my disappointment. I was thrilled and happy when I was working on my project, because I thought I could save us a lot of time and money. I didn’t like to discover that there was a limit to what I could do with that sewing machine. I really wanted it to be the equal of the huge sewing machine I saw in Quantum’s loft. Reality is sometimes extremely unpleasant. When hopes are dashed, it may be a spiritual wound, but it has physical consequences. I felt as tired as I felt after our 50-hour passage.
No point crying, however. I can sing “alas and alack” as long as I like, and it won’t change anything. Time to get moving. Time to do what it takes and go forward. As the Bible says, we must gird up our loins and hie ourselves to Quantum tomorrow. We already know that their production schedule is about over, so we devoutly hope to squeeze our order into the early part of their repair work. Enough of “alas and alack.” Time to move on.
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