The rain overnight and this morning helped to clean the dust off the boat - there's lots in the air here. Some say it's the nearby airport adding to 'desert' dust - but all I know is there's lots of it and it's DARK!
Searching under the forepeak bunk on Friday, I finally laid my hands on the missing new wind transducer- so that can be installed early next week. I also made sure I could use the forepeak bunk Friday - I'd been forced to sleep on the cabin sole Thursday night. Having moved things out of the forepeak onto the starboard saloon settee, I'd lost the bunk I've been using while the aft bunk has been unuseable because of wiring problems.
I got out the enormous Spanish buckets I store in the engine compartment and soaked all the reefing lines, furling line and just about any other lines, halyards etc I could - all were really stiff with salt, as well as being dirty.
My replacement AIS unit for the one stolen a week ago arrived late Friday but the Garmin GPS plotter was delayed in Customs & won't be delivered until Monday now. What did arrive was the Nobeltec 'dongle' for my laptop - I telephoned and got the permit code so now I have access to charts of the entire world on my laptop - great!
Ray brought a ladder & had a look at the Navtex antenna - seems the coax wire down to the connector he replaced is faulty - wil need to run a new one next week (he's really busy just now & being very kind popping by so often trying to sort out my wiring/instrument problems)
Friday evening went again for a motoryacht trip (& pizza) in Ed Letzring's "Abracadabra" with the same friends as 2 wks ago - enjoyed view of the San Diego night skyline from the water. Then spent a lot of time emailing photos for adding in to my website and adding/correcting website text. Also sent photos to journalist from the local 'Log' newspaper for adding to story on 'Nereida' to be published on 23rd Feb.
Saturday I had lunch with Gigi, her husband & their (triplet) 14 yr old boys - very nice lads - at C-Level with a good view of the Bay area over to San Diego city centre ('downtown'). Food was delicious - calamari etc followed by crab salad. Rinsed out lines and replaced water in buckets. Surprises me that water here isn't metered..! Read a lot in J. Cornell's World Cruising Routes and read friends' emails on their cruising in S. Pacific etc before writing more for my website on my proposed circumnavigation route.
Sunday I managed to get a little more wiring done - Seatalk/RS232 connection for laptop & 12V outlet replacement (finally!) & tidied up cables - all took far longer than I expected. Tidied & sorted a little more. Dealt with lines, using softener and then hanging them all up to drip dry. Soaked genoa sheets and other ends of reefing lines. Spoke to several people on Skype - that is so useful for keeping in touch!!
I'm looking forward to lots happening on Monday .... it was good to see the rain had cleared away by mid-afternoon.