The reefing lines are now working well with new blocks in the boom. This means that if we need to reduce our sail area due to high winds, then it can all be done from the cockpit safely.
We have also had the main sail valeted so it’s nice and clean for our trip. Haven’t had the bill yet but Flew Sails in Portsmouth Harbour are usually very reasonable. We attached the main sail back onto the boom and the mast yesterday in record time – less than 3 hours so very pleased with ourselves. This particular job always takes so much longer than you would think so it was good to do it in bright sunshine and relatively light winds.
Nimrod Oceanlord 
Hi Liz,
This is very interesting reading for a non-sailor. You folks be careful out there. Godspeed and look forward to your return.
Greg Miller
laughing at the three hours ………… it took us most of a day to do ours. We got the lazy jack/sail cover on backwards so we had to drop the sail and take it off the boom to turn it around. Having done this, we then put the second reef line in the third reef cringle and had to unthread it all (having put the first reef in the second cringle of course ……) As we were unthreading it all, we managed to pull one of the reefing lines into the boom, so we had to take the sail off , take the sail cover off, take the boom off and retrieve the end of the reefing line ………….
Once we got it all put back together we had a beer and went home !! I wish I could say we will learn from our school boy errors, but we made the same error with the sail cover last spring 😦