i did mention that we had a few issues with the self-tacking jib not tacking by itself, which was a bit frustrating and really slowing us down. the issue was not difficult to diagnose: the traveler car that is supposed to run along its aluminium channel was a bit hesitant.
maybe a bit of a clean would help the bearing balls find their mojo again? turns out a few things were not quite up to specs. the smaller bearing balls that run along the oblong section were ok, but they appeard to be missing a few of their friends. when i slowly and carefully removed the car, which required me to split it, i found fewer than half of the 42 balls i was expecting. i’m not sure if i managed to drop them, but i sure as hell could not find any of them … and i really, really looked.
the other thing that was obviously missing were the plates that harken had put there to ensure the little brown delrin balls would not escape. that may or may not have a lot to do with the fact that quite a lot of them seemed to be unaccounted for.
and then there were the quarter inch torlon balls. one was missing and one was showing signs of trying to become a cube, with considerable success i might add. no wonder things weren’t all going smoothly.
the local chandlery had all the balls i needed (for the car i mean) and the plates also arrived just in time to reassemble the car halves. this did look much more promising, and definitely significantly more in line with the manufacturer’s specs.
here we go: back on board again and ready to self-tack that jib again. yay.