Hi Gene,
Yeah, discovering that our spare wire was too short was a real "Ah SH*T! What are we gonna do now?" moment. I had expected to pull into Vava'u and tie up to a mooring for a couple of hours, swap out the wires, jury rig an SSB antenna, top up with fuel and be on our way. We were trying to figure out the quickest way to get a new wire shipped in and during one of the trips to shore in the dinghy, we went close by an old schooner with galvanized wire shrouds and each one of them had a foot or so of chain at the bottom. My wife spooted it, pointed and said "Maybe we could do something like that."

The rest as they say is history. It took a couple of different shackles in the mix to make it work, but since we just shortened the original backstay and installed a Norseman fitting on the end, I didn't have to even rig an SSB antenna. We could still use the one in the backstay.

FYI, had we needed it, the fasted way to get the new wire would have been to order it delivered to Pago Pago, American Samoa and motored over to meet it. It would have expensive in terms of fuel, but being an American posession, you can just send stuff there Priority Mail from the U.S. It comes in on a flight every Thur evening.