Susan and I met at Gypsy Friday afternoon. I arrived at the marina first and discovered that our friends Jack & Marcia on Right’s of Man were still at the dock. They were supposed to have departed for Bermuda and the Europe by now so I dropped in to see how they were making out. What I found was two whirlwinds of activity; Jack busy doing last minute installations and Marcia packing all their provisions.
Susan showed up shortly thereafter with our newly remade storm jib. We unloaded our cars and set to work immediately. I was anxious to see if the replacement Tri Color light from OGM worked so Susan hoisted me up the mast to install that. Unfortunately the mounting bracket that I had worked out when the mast was down didn’t fit. I had failed to take into account the butt end of our wind instrument which wasn’t installed at the time. I plugged it in anyway and fastened the bracket with only one screw so that we could at least see if the light worked and it did, finally! I’ll have to go back up the mast in the near future and straighten out that bracket.In the last minutes of remaining daylight we tried out our remade storm jib on the new inner forestay. Aaron of Ace Sailmakers did a super job of re-enforcing the luff and installing jib hanks in place of the bolt rope. I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out.
The next morning we started to work early installing the solar system. There was tricky wiring to run in difficult to access places and that project consumed the day. When it started to get dark we had dinner and then installed the modem for the Ham/SSB radio. The physical hook up for that went smother than expected with excellent instruction from Dockside Radio. We won’t know if it works until I can download the Airmail software onto my computer.On Sunday morning we went for a short walk before starting our day’s chores. We spotted this beautiful little vintage racing sail boat on C dock.
We also checked in on the restoration of this classic sailboat that in another part of our marina. I can’t imagine how much work in involved in a project like this, tons I’m sure. I’m glad someone is making the effort because this is a lovely boat that deserves preserving.
Then it was back to work for us. Susan spent most of the day scraping varnish and I finished hooking up the solar system. The panels were putting out an amazing 35 volts of electricity and the monitor seemed to be working but for some unknown reason the system wasn’t charging our batteries. After working on it all day I gave up for the time being planning to come back and look at the problem with a fresh prospective as I was feeling burnt out by then.
We drove to my place together Sunday night so that we could be ready to move my furniture back into the house bright and early on Monday morning. I had refinished all the floors and it was time to set the place up for market. After moving the furniture, Susan cleaned most of the windows and I sanded and painted the back porch. In the middle of the day I visited my doctor for a physical and got a clean bill of health. There’s still lots to do at my place before it's ready to show but we’ve got most of the work behind us.We both feel like we’ve been running on a treadmill for months and are looking forward to the day when we can slacken our hectic pace and enjoy our boat.
131 days
