The Boat Show is over and the reality that we have little more than two months remaining to get Arcturus seaworthy has finally set in. My two college roommates and best friends in the world just left after visiting us for a week, a week in which we had tons of fun, drank way too much booze, lost money gambling and got nothing accomplished on the boat. The four of us took the train down to Miami last week to sail Arcturus back to Pompano. It was the first time we had a chance to sail the boat with the new rigging. Ryan and Nate hauled me up the mast one last time to secure the backstay in place permanently (it had previously been jury-rigged for the show), and we tightened up the deadeyes again before setting out. Government Cut, the inlet at Miami Beach, was incredibly long, and we spent a slow hour motoring out the channel while a slew of megayachts pursued us. The weather was ideal, though the wind was from the north, the direction we were headed. The biggest problem with synthetic rigging is that you must re-set the braid after splicing it. A new shroud will stretch up to four inches after a new splice before the braid is re-set (the rope then has less stretch than wire), but in a DIY installation, it's difficult to get the 2000 lbs. of load required to do this on each new shroud. Certainly a rigging shop would have been easier than the cabin of a 35' boat to accomplish this. A long slog to windward, however, would more than do the trick. Once clear of the breakwater we set the jib and mizzen, foregoing the mainsail entirely in order to ease the rig. We didn't need it anyway - Arcturus was soon bowling along at a steady 6 knots, close-hauled and sailing north along Miami Beach. I was constantly eyeing the mast and the new rigging, watching for stretch on the new shrouds and making sure the mast remained in column. After tightening the lee shrouds on the first tack, we came about and headed inland, to snug up the now stretched shrouds and stretch out the new windward shrouds. This process of tacking and tuning, all the while keeping the mast in column was tedious but necessary, even had the new rig been of wire. We were sailing just inside the Gulf Stream in South Florida, though by the looks of the crew, we could have been in Alaska. I was wearing the new Russian-style hunters hat my sister bought me for Christmas with full foul-weather gear, despite enjoying a bright sunny day. Nate and Ryan