Sailing with Antara

First test rig Some of you had trouble figuring the boatese. Have a look at this diagram on Pinterest to help you with names of different parts of the boat. Meanwhile. one of the first things we did on getting Antara out of the shed, was to put up her mast  and boom. They can't stay up on their own, so the forestay and the backstay were put up too. That's when we realised that the forestay was a little short. With a sailboat such things are expected and I'm learning to not expect a perfect fit the first time.  Tied up in knots We used one of the halyards then and moved on to the other ropes. We started with the mainsail sheets. These will help move the mainsail from side to side and will be controlled from the cockpit. As we laid out the rope, we had to keep in mind the rope width (12mm), the fittings required and the appropriate length such that it would be long enough for a boom stretched out on a broad reach. Then we set up the furler line and the foresail sh

Antara came into our lives by a lucky quirk of fate, in early 2018. Her hull was ready but we needed to dress her and drape her and make her seaworthy. An easy task for a circumnavigator you would  say. It took us about 10 months to go from hull to sailboat; and, she is still work in progress! Initiation The first thing we had to do was get her sale deed registered, and the boat officially transferred in our name. It took us longer though, for it to register in our heads, that we were the owners of a yacht!  Hello Antara Only once we had the sale deed, did we go down to the yard, Ratnakar Dandekar's Aquarius Shipyard , to have a first look at our boat, in October 2018. I was terribly excited and couldn't wait to get there, whereas Dilip , the resident stoic, quietly drove to the yard and parked the car.  Antara was in an enclosed shed, with work material from the yard strewn all around. We used a couple of drums, placed handily near her stern to clamber up the tr