Dear regular crew, I thought that I'd share some of the newest and greatest about Elise as she slowly but surely advances on the path to perfect tuning :)
Hull (and looks)
- Elise has a brand new bottom paint. It looks absolutely fabulous - a subtle light grey can only add to her elusive personality ;-) The boat was quite fast during the midwinters, despite a few extra coats of paint.
Mechanics/Electronics:
- The outboard is working again! And I have a broken carburator in my trunk for anyone who's interested in salvaging damaged mechanical parts :) I will take 2% on the eBay transaction. It faithfully propelled Elise through the water from Alcatraz back to the dock at a good 6 knots SOG (ok, ok, there might have been a little help from the current), proving once again that Elise under any condition can be a really fast and light boat.
- The battery is hooked up, only for us to find out that most bulbs need changing :) Some of them were too corroded to still work, and a solid arc of salt seems to have established a short-circuit :) And a super sexy solar panel is now on board, awaiting some super sexy connectors and a little extra piece of super sexy technology to avoid battery overcharge. The super sexy battery was steadily delivering a solid 12V nominal to power up the starboard side compass illumination light and the knotmeter (which showed a disappointed 0 kt...but then I guess that we were docked...)
- A sobre-looking barometer now decorates the galley - and should the Internet, all cellphone networks, telephone lines, newspaper and harbormaster VHF channels be disabled at the same time, will help us understand which way the weather is headed.
- We are in the racing business now, with a "turn it on and it works" ICOM hand-held VHF and a buggy GPS which can't find Alcratraz, even as we sail about 100 yards away from the island.
Sails/Wind Instruments:
- A brand new windex is presiding majestically over the recently brushed up/soaped up deck and points to the miracle wind direction. It also has two little pennants to help us during our downwind legs :)
- All the sails now have hanks and can be hoisted - some of the tack fittings for the old sail don't fit the current set up, but nothing that can't be remedied with a magic shackle :) All main sails have been fixed (small tear in one of them, tiny holes that needed to be patched in others) - the Dacron main is missing the top batten but we are actively working on changing this. It looks like North Sails is having some difficulties counting up to 4.
- The spinnakers have two super functional high tech lots of velcro everywhere type launch bags. They make us look really competent and I am sure must be very intimidating to everyone else in the fleet. And the 2nd kevlar main now has a brand new bag, which means that we can all wear the sail ties as necklaces.
- We have a new winch handle...
Looks:
- A shiny blue tarp cover is elegantly tossed over both sides of the deck and rests gracefully on the trailer to protect lines and woodwork from acid sun beams as well as the interior from nasty rain.
If You Remember Only One Thing
- the cooler has 9 bottles of beer in it. Grand Cru.
The Bad News
On the sad side, we have lost a cup holder, a fairly traumatic incident for all of us.
So what's next?
- We need to fix the outhaul which seems to have decided to be frankly un-cooperative.
- We will change the halyards for all the headsails as we believe that they all suffer from high sun exposure with no sunscreen
- We will replace all the lights so that we can be enjoy the illuminated skyline from Angel Island without having to pay a tax to the Coast Guard
- We will service the Cunningham cleat as it works only one way at this time (you can secure the line in but like Hotel California, you can never check out...)
- We will get some wine for the most civilized amongst us
- We are checking with the USCG to see if we can fly a French flag for fun and not upset anyone
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