Measure Twice, Cut Once!

Measure Twice, Cut Once!

... an American friend of ours says that the British always measure twice and cut once and Americans measure once and cut twice. He meant that the American government and industry research and development organisations had more resources at their disposal and as a result could become complacent and wasteful, whereas the British, with relatively modest means, were better stewards of their resources (frugal you might say) and as a result could be more innovative. It is an attractive theory, but there are more Apples in the US economy than from British stock. But perhaps that is not just about our nations' engineers, but something to do with investors, financial regulation, business culture and access to large markets.

What has this got to do with a sailing blog you might ask? Well, this weekend Froo Gal's co-skippers took advantage of the spring sunshine to tackle a few of the per-season jobs on the boat. We secured a bracket, cut, whipped and attached a line for the snubber and reattached a bungee cord to the anchor locker lid, replacing the attachments that had corroded through. And we 'invented' a new job. We noticed that the bungee cord attaching the bottom of the cockpit tent was beginning to perish. It did not need replacing immediately, but the sun was shining and it would be a pleasant and quick task to perform in the sunshine. We removed one of the loops, measured it once, did a quick count of the number of loops and set off for the marine chandlers. We bought 4m of bungee, had a leisurely lunch and returned to complete the work. We ran out of bungee about half way through, doubling the time it took to complete the job, by requiring a second trip to the chandlers. Whilst this only lost us half an hour and cost us no extra on this occasion, it served as useful reminder to measure twice and cut once, rather than being ill prepared and making work for ourselves and others. In doing so we can be more frugal boat owners.

We now just have to replace the prop, fit the mainsail battens, route the reefing lines and we will be ready to sail. Let's hope we have ordered the right replacement prop (we did check in two independent places)!