Work Weekend

A couple of weekends ago, Nathan and I spent two solid days working on the boat, installing various things.

- Stove installation: we mounted the stove against the bulk head and facing the V berth. It won't be easy to use by anyone on deck and we won't be able to see the flame. However mounting it elsewhere didn't allow it to properly wiggle...and close to the companionway, we might get a lot of salty coffee...I was so clever in this installation that I drilled 4 useless holes near the companionway...never mind...We have mounted a gas bottle since we probably won't use the stove just now but we will as soon as we believe it might be useful (also for winter racing in the Bay, I am sure that a hot chocolate or tea will be appreciated)

- GPS: the GPS antenna was mounted (well, the actual cable needs some re-routing) and the GPS unit is now proudly overlooking the nav table. Very cool color maps with stunning resolution. We could see all the way down to actual slips in the Bay harbors. So it was working and receiving the info it needed from satellites.

- Autopilot instruments: Nathan did a major feat in that he connected the NKE instruments. So we now have a knotmeter and depth sounder. He also did this in such a way that we can run on instruments only mode and autopilot mode which is fabulous. The rest of the news on the autopilot isn't that great since we bent one of the arms so we need to contact NKE to see what we can do about that.

- Nathan did a lot of measuring and dimensioning for the electricity and trying to find out what our energy bill was going to be. This is fairly tricky since we don't have an engine and will have to rely on solar power and two tiny batteries...This will dictate how much we will be able to run the auto-pilot.

- Took pictures of the visible chafe on the external halyard by going aloft and taking a look at the various attach points.

- Bought handrails, another smaller solar panel (similar to the one that was already on board), a new dock line to replace our fast decaying one. We sawed the emergency tiller to size (it now requires a few holes and a nice varnish coat). Spent some time setting up the personal whistles so they're easy to use

- We have a spin net, a new (2nd) reefing point on the Dacron main that we will take with us. We measured up the dimensions for leecloths on both the settees and the berths and we ordered those. Taped up the base of the shrouds and the wires at the base of the mast (there was a leak there). We bought a lot of the electrical equipment (cables, etc...) we needed for the installation of all the instruments, also a waterproof case for a laptop, star finders for celestial navigation, more fasteners for all the parts we needed, more waterproof bags as it will be nice to have dry clothes...and underwear; a hard case for our flares, bought a grab bag (big), plastic covers for our big charts, new stickers with all the marine flags, a "lunch" bag which we can take up deck that doubles up as a cooler and won't get a lot of salt. So we can keep food on deck and we won't have to go below. Major plus for seasickness at the beginning.

- Nathan performed a great engineering feat by fitting the solar-powered cabin fan on top of the boat!! (it wasn't the same diameter, probably some inch Vs metric system trick) So when the cover isn't on, we can still get a little fresh air in there. Very very pleasant.

High tech Elise is looking nicer and nicer...