Yesterday was my first day on Elise in...ahem...quite a while. The boat yard is not quite done yet so we delivered Elise to the Richmond Yacht Club as it is hosting the Great Pumpkin, this weekend's race. On Sunday night, we will have to bring Elise back to the boat yard...
First, we looked at all the changes and repairs. She was nicely cleaned up and looked very bright and beautiful in the sun. The mast plate and cabin top are repaired. It's a nice and solid job (reinforced now!).
There is a conduit that runs inside the mast and through which we deliver power to the tricolor on top of the mast and the big VHF antenna now presiding over the boat and priding itself to be the most elevated point on Elise. Why do we have a tricolor (eg. navigation lights on top of the mast in one unit) I hear you ask. Well, in the ocean and in the swell, it might be easier for anyone else to see your lights if they are 32 feet above the surface of the water. It also helps light up the masthead fly which indicates the direction of the wind. At night otherwise, it's impossible for us to see where the wind comes from. If there is a lot of breeze and we are beating or reaching it is possible to feel the wind on your face. If the wind is really light, or if we are downwind, this clue is much less reliable!
It is not allowed to have two sets of navigation lights visible at the same time (we still have a set on deck), but it is Ok for the boat to have them - and choose to use one or the other at any given time.
Navigation lights on a boat primarily serve as an identification mechanism and a "hey I am here, don't run into me" device. On the starboard side, it is green...On the port side, it is red...Aft, it is white...that is for a sailboat. If you use your engine, you must add a motoring light, half way up the mast (white), which we do not have. We are not really using our engine that often so it's OK. When a sailboat starts an engine, it becomes a powerboat and does not benefit from the right of way perks any longer.
VHF stands for Very High Frequency and not Very Hyper French /Frog as most people think. This just defines the band of carrier frequencies that are used to transmit radio messages (imagine that the message is a passenger and the carrier frequency the train. The passenger boards the train and then gets off when it has arrived at his or her destination). The reception is better on top of the mast (less risk of interference) so it should be up there.
We have also the new Hi-Tech halyards in place: one for the main sail, one for the headsail and one for the spinnaker. A halyard is the line that is used to hoist (and douse) the sails.
We have a nice neat autohelm installation below deck. The wind instruments are pretty aggressive looking and emerge from below deck at the stern. The knotmeter is in place but it wasn't yet connected to the battery so we couldn't run it.
The gel coat works was hard to check as some of it is below the waterline. The chips at the bow are now invisible though.
The lifeline was tightened up to meet class regulations (5 inches). The rail is now adjustable so we can tighten it whenever we want ourselves.
The traveler car and track were changed and now run very smoothly.
The rubber seal around the front hatch was replaced to make it a bit more waterproof :)
The companionway hatch (wooden door to the boat) needs some heavy wood protection work though...Looks like it's gotten some chemotherapy, it's peeling away!
There are a couple more things to do:
- finish up the autohelm install
- replace the old aft lifelines on both sides
- change the outhaul turning block as we couldn't easily use it to trim the main yesterday
- see if the "Elise" name is painted and could be scraped so we can stick a new "Elise" logo name on top of it.
We'll take a lot of pictures of these changes over the weekend and will post them up on the blog. I will talk about the actual sailing experience in my next post!
So long!
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