The Chinese think we are now in the Year of the Tiger. I think they may be wrong.
At least here in Phuket we feel it must be the year of the rat. Some of our Face Book friends may remember the scene I faced when I opened our storage locker after our return from Europe. Three rats were caught in my glue trap.
A few weeks later, with the yacht still on dry land in the yard subject to upgrading work, I found this rope, below, in our sail locker on board. It’s an unused sheet, chewed through in many places. Also one of the sail bags had a large hole. But the discoveries didn’t end here.
Sometimes when we leave the yacht for longer periods I have left the main sail (and mizzen) on the boom protected by the canvas cover, thinking that it actually is a better place in stead of folding the sail into a bag. We have never had any problems with that other than sometimes bees build nests inside. This time we were up for a big surprise. There were 3 large holes in the thick (8 oz) Dacron fabric, clearly the mark of rats.
So as a warning to fellow cruisers, I’m giving you a heads up for this potential problem. This sail was almost 19 years old, with 60.000nm of service, and I had been thinking of retiring it anyway, so it was not a big loss. But what if it would have been a brand new one? The price of the new sail is 3.500 USD.