With all the stays up and tensioned, it is time to do some tidy work to the stays around the deck.
If I were to leave his rigging looking like this, I wouldn't get hired! This rats nest of rope is only acceptable during the tuning process when the stays are frequently untied and retied. There is no point in tidying up the lines if you are going to retie them tomorrow. Now that we are putting on the finishing touches, it is time to clean up the deck since we wont be messing with the lashings for some time.
The tails of the lashings were tied to cover the shroud frapping knot and to consume all the long free ends that used to hang like Spanish Moss from swamp trees.
All the shrouds are finished and tied off, the backstay is set and tensioned, and this job is almost complete! With everything tied off and tidied up on the deck it will soon be time to go aloft and seize the spreader tips and perform a final inspection of the rigging conversion.
