Another lovely day but there were jobs to do. We were not happy with rig tension as we could see that the leeward aft lower shrouds were very loose when sailing and flopping around. Richard had treated himself to a Loos rigging tension gauge at the end of the last season so he went around and measured the tension in each shroud. Our fellow Rustler 36 owners have posted suggested tension settings and there is a guidance document with the gauge itself. Anyway the tension in the backstay was increased a little bit and the aft lower shrouds fairly considerably. The others shrouds seemed about correct with the main shrouds the tightest as recommended by Loos. We have 9mm rigging and the tension is between 30 and 35 on the upper scale which means about 8 to 11 percent of the break strength of the wire. Richard thought this was going to be a hard job but in the end it was quite straightforward. Apparently it is impossible to over tighten the rigging in the static condition just with normal hand tools.
Then replaced some missing teak plugs over the screws in the teak in the cockpit and tried to make some very small gelcoat repairs. Unfortunately it turned out that the needed catalyst had leaked out of its storage bottle even though it was sealed and unopened and so this job had to be abandoned. It was still a productive day.