While the buzzling teams for promotion, location-setup and organizing the upcoming Riga-event busily spread all over the city and at all festival locations, the “Lovis” crew has to catch up with maintenance tasks on the ship. Among this: the main sail.

After the heavy use at the Latvian westcoast and due to its age some tears at the leech and luff appeared. Without soon fixes they could turn into real problems. So we get prepared with special sail fabric (which we already got in Gdansk), leather and tools.

At first the sail needs to be taken off the mast and gaff so we can work on it. It is a unusual picture to see the sail being taken into pieces. While the fabric needs to be attached from both sides, the leather has to be well prepared with dubbing and fulling to get it soft enough.

As sail, fabric and leather are much to strong to be simply stitched together, we perforate the stitching pattern in advance. Then comes the sewing with a strong waxed thread. We need two people to hold it strong.

Three patches at the leech and the one on the luff took us until dusk and our inexperienced hands are exhausted and slightly swollen. But now the sail is prepared for new adventures at sea Moving Baltic Sea and the “Lovis” are facing on their way to Narva, St. Peterburg and back.