West Wight Potter Owners Home Port _______________________________________________________________________________________________ |
| Technical Information Stopping the Ping! by Larry Costa First Published on the PY Web Site |
Stopping that annoying ping, ping, ping in the middle of the night.
While camping out at Black Point on my way down to Richmond I had forgotten to wrap my main
halyard around the mast to stop it, and the other lines from slapping against the mast when the wind
came up.
Sure enough at about 2:00 AM I was awoken that most annoying noise, and couldn't get back to sleep
until I fixed it. Laying in my nice warm bunk I started devising many involved schemes but when it
came down to cutting the lines and pulling them down and throwing them overboard (It had become
quite annoying by now) I settled for the quick fix.
On my way out of the cabin I grabbed a bungee, the kind with the balls on each end, climbed up on
top of the cabin and wrapped the bungee around the mast and lines as high up as I could reach. This
stopped most of the slapping and I was able to go back to sleep.
When I reached Richmond I had time to work on this idea and mused on it for about an hour while I
was readying HC for the night. Coming up blank I grabbed my trusty bungee and started up on to
the cabin when I noticed the boat next to me. The skipper had taken a hooked end type bungee and
had hooked the lines with one end. The other end he had hooked around a side shroud.
I climbed back into the cabin and dug through my rope box and found my last hooked bungee. Back
on the cabin top I followed his example, and found that the system worked.
So now you have three different ways to make sure that you don't have to climb out of your snug bunk
in the middle of the night; Wrap the halyard, with a bungee around the mast, or hook the halyards to
the shrouds with a bungee.
Which ever way you go this should contribute to a more enjoyable overnight stay on your trusty Potter.