The new Harken furling foil kit arrived only a couple of days later, excellent service! We gathered up the eight foil connectors that would need to be put on the wire before it was swaged, purchased the 316 wire, top toggle and end stud fittings then dropped it off at the swaging shop in Ballard. By the next weekend, we had our beautiful new stay, complete with the foil connectors already on. We downloaded the manual from Harken’s website and read over the section on attaching the foils to the connectors.

Ready to assemble our foils back together, we gathered up the new foils, still wrapped in plastic. Out dropped a ninth connector piece from somewhere in the plastic wrappings. Oh f@#$! It’s always a terribly sinking feeling to have spare parts when your thingamajig is already assembled. Another quick scan through the Harken manual and we discovered that the extra connector doesn’t really connect any foils, but is used at the very top foil as an extra bearing and support. Great.

We then read that if the top foil is cut to 17 inches or less, the extra connector is not used as there wouldn’t be enough room. We quickly measured the length of our existing top foil: 23 inches. It was fine, we told ourselves. No need to panic. The top foil is pretty short anyway so we’re sure the system will be just fine without the extra bearing.

We commenced to attaching each foil. Following the manual exactly, we taped each connector down at the end of the stay, then slid a foil up, then a connector, then a foil etc. Each time we used plenty of the red Locktite provided with the kit on each connector and carefully screwed them together. At last, all the foils were connected and our forestay was nearly complete.

But then we hardly slept the next two nights. It was killing us knowing that we still had that extra connector. It’s our forestay after all! What if the foils chafe on the stay without the extra support, cut through it and the mast falls down and kills us halfway to Tahiti? All sorts of scenarios play out in our mind and we realize we just can’t cut corners. We’ll have to make it right.

To be continued….