Email from Matt Newland

I received the email below from Matt who is the owner of Swallow boats. Good to see him taking responsibility for the quality control issues I encounted. Nice of him to actually send me a personal email. I rigged everything yesterday and it all looked good. I am splashing Nomad today! First time in the water. A shake down sail to make sure everything works - including the skipper 8>) *************************************** . I am sorry for the issues you have had. I am currently out of the office at a boat show until end of next week but I have managed to read and view you email and attachment. The simplest answer is to drill a 1/4 inch hole through the top of the topmast about half an inch down. Tie a bowline through that and the head of the sail, so that the bowline is round them both. Use about 5m or so of string for this. Use the tail end to lace the rest of the luff. Tie off at the bottom around the base of the jaws.don't pull the lacing too tight, there should be about half inch or so of gap between the topmast and the sail. If you want to use the fairlead instead, then make sure it is screwed to the forward face of the topmast, and the bowline threads around the topmast,so that the screws holding it are not doing so much work. The fitting should be screwed in. You will have no problem screwing into the carbon as long as your pilot hole is not too small. If it is, and you have a powerful drill/driver it is easy to shear off the screw head as the carbon is less forgiving than wood. the top screw should go through the carbon and wood, the bottom just through carbon, but that is not a problem, as long as the fairlead is on the front face of the topmast, so that the screws are not being pulled outwards. Regarding the block at the mast head. As I am out of the office I cannot check the exact spec for the harken deck gear boats. But given the problems above I would be happy to pay you or Bill to send one to you. However would you mind waiting until after the show? I would like to do my research on the block strength as it is holding up the mast, so very important. If you could use the one supplied for now I would be grateful, and I will get back to you both after the show. Hope that is all fine. Sorry again for these issues. No decent excuse and none of it is Bills fault. Best wishes Matt