Project Updates

Flash update on many projects as we’re churning them out over here!

New Spinnaker

A spinnaker is a light-weight sail you fly in the very front of the boat, usually when sailing with the wind behind you. They’re often referred to as a “kite” because of the way the sail pulls you with the wind. They’re a lot of fun and especially useful for us and our moderately heavy displacement boat to make progress in lighter winds. A big part of our preparation for this trip is make sure we have a sail or sail combination for every expected (and unexpected) weather condition we might encounter. Our usual combination of a genoa (big jib) and mainsail is now supplemented with a storm mainsail (smaller for when it’s VERY windy), storm jib (to be flown on a remove-able inner forestay we’ll be installing at our haul-out), and now our spinnaker for lighter and downwind conditions. We also have an anchor-riding sailing to keep our boat from swinging back and forth in a windy anchorage, movement that can dislodge the anchor over time.

We bought the spinnaker with a cruising package from The Sail Warehouse in Monterey, CA. It’s a full-shouldered asymmetrical spinnaker made with heavier-duty 1.5oz sailcloth. The cruising package came with a sock to facilitate launching and retrieving the spinnaker, as well as two sheets, sheet blocks, a halyard, and an ATN tacker. All of these goodies will make flying the sail easier with just the two of us and were an excellent deal altogether. Thanks Sail Warehouse!

120v AC Mess

Another win was tidying up the 120v AC system on the boat. The original system (from the late 70’s) was okay but had been marred by years of “shortcuts” and “bandaids” from previous owners. It had gotten to the point where every time I went to install a new 120v device like outlets or a transfer switch for our inverter, it was downright scary to be working on. That’s no way to be! I ended up spending a week identifying the AC circuits and redrawing the busses that they should run to. I re-wired a lot of the system and traced it from shore power connected down to each appliance and cleaned up along the way. I made a new bus location in the starboard lazarette to separate bussing between the AC and DC systems and used new hardware to ensure safety and hopefully 40+ more years of service!

Here are some photos of the old system halfway through me ripping it out (yikes):