Everything started out fine. The Captain had a gist of an idea, a vague rememberance of how it should be done... and so he started applying tape to the shrouds 1 meter apart, after they had been loosened. The Admiral stood there looking pretty on the foredeck curiously, but unobtrusively observing. Around about the fourth shroud, he measured, put the tape measure down leaving it to wind itself up, and started to mark off the meter.
The tape measure seized this opportunity to zip itself up... down the deck, over to the scupper and off into the briny depths. Note: The scupper is the hole in the toe rail to let water off the deck - which I might add was the only one that was not blocked off in some way.
So, the interesting part.... Well that was the only tape measure on board, and it's Sunday, and chances are not in our favor for purchasing a *metric* tape measure in the land of imperial... *curses*
After laughing at ourselves for a few minutes we regained our composure, dug out a chunk of metal, taped a ruler to the end, and proceeded. I unofficially dubbed it the "Bar of measures", called to duty for a task it was never intended... performed beautifully!
All in all we managed to straighten out the mast, we achieved *some* sort of moderately equally tension on all of the shrouds... and got two that had been crossed at some point uncrossed (we wont talk about that). We also deemed our sacrifice to the Sea Gods was acceptable, since the scissors when dropped did not abandon ship.
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At 28/09/2010 3:57 AM (utc) our position was 40°48.44'N 124°09.79'W
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