Pacific Cup Preparation Update

Elise spent the last week at the Berkeley Marine Center - they did a great job and I am pleased to report that:

a) Elise has a mount and an external spare halyard (which we can remove of course for normal operations). This spare halyard is mounted according to the infinite loop principle, except that it is an open loop. It starts at the top of the mast, so it can be used as a spare main halyard. In which case, it comes down along the mast on the outside and can be routed through turning blocks back to the cockpit. It is also clipped at the level of the spin and jib halyards on the front of the mast since Elise is a fraction rig. If we use it in that mode, the "rear" part will come down the mast and be routed through the turning blocks back to the cockpit. That way, we can use it as a spare headsail halyard and not take a hit in our rating, we will be flying these sails exactly from the same position as with regular halyards. This halyard will also allow us to go up the mast to fix stuff while keeping the main up (otherwise, we need to hope that what needs to be fixed is not any higher than the fraction rig attach point) - and who knows, we may use it to get something or someone out of the water...
(and I guess that if you ask for a spare external halyard mount, you also get the spare halyard, we were planning to use our old halyards...but hey :) who can turn down a line really :) Maybe we'll turn our spare halyard into the offshore foreguy)

b) Elise has a brand new super cool looking forward hatch. It's super slick and it looks so good on her. The main characteristic of this new piece of equipment though is that it should be pretty much water tight. Especially good in today's rainy weather.

c) The traveler's top cleats got changed for the 3rd time, even though it really is the bare metal plate at the top that needs changing. Oh well, I guess our explanation wasn't very good.

d) We do have a nice clean plexiglas companionway hatch, which comes in two parts and which we can open and close from both the inside and the outside.

e) Both the portholes and the shroud bases are now properly sealed. In the process, the boat yard identified a couple of small leaks near the transom, so we'll see what we want to do about that.

They talked to Jim Antrim who had some great idea about the emergency rudder so we took the boat back there after the Three Bridge Fiasco and we look forward to hearing from them about that!