Relaxing day

Tuesday Lovely, sunny day, as usual, without too many disturbances from jet-skiers and other small boats full of holidaymakers - or maybe I'm just getting used to them? A productive day - having found a vital pin yesterday that kept trying to come loose in the wind-steering mechanism, a priority was to fix it in place somehow, bearing in mind I'd be wanting to use the wind-steering a lot in the coming passage. Overnight, to make sure the pin wasn't lost, I taped it over with Gorilla tape - with a strong adhesive backing, it did its job well. I decided that a penny washer, together with a couple of other smaller washers, could be wired in place to stop the pin coming out. The hole in the penny washer was just too big but with the smaller washers reducing the hole, the result was fine. Using mousing wire, which is quite flexible, it didn't take too long to sort out - see photo. The rest of the day was spent sorting out the boat with a long passage in mind - I got out my clear Lexan washboard and put it in place and cleared and cleaned the cockpit, as well as down below. I had plenty of time to catch up with some overdue emails as well as downloading the usual batch of weather faxes (Pt Reyes comes through better than Honolulu) and grib files. The weather news this morning was of strong NW winds persisting over the day off the Baja coast - so not a time to get going since I want to head WNW, if possible. Tomorrow, the winds might still be fairly strong and from WNW, which could well cause me a problem, but they should be slowly easing over the next few days. The seas will, as usual, take a time to lie down giving a rough ride for a time. I might try leaving tomorrow and see what it's like once a few miles out of the Bay. It's very protected in here, so very deceptive. The swell has been causing a lot of surf on the nearby beaches - I hear the sound of waves crashing all the time when on deck. I'll try to get a good sleep tonight - might be my last for quite a time if it's as rough out there to begin with as I suspect it will be...