Sunday morning, I moved to a new slip conveniently close to the clubhouse here - no more biking to get there from "Nereida"! A beautiful hot day - proper 'California' weather! Spent much of the day finally getting started on laying a new 3" wide copper strip between the ATU and new (2nd!) ground-plate for my SSB radio (the hope is to improve even further my transmission on the radio... we'll see how successful that is as I sail down to Mexico & on...). Difficult because the copper had to go behind wooden strips in the aft cabin laid against the hull and there isn't much space there - had to unscrew every piece of wood to persuade the copper to lay correctly & took most of the day doing just that. Today (Monday), I've replaced all the wood and screws and nearly finished laying the copper down to the ground-plate. I'm covering the copper with sticky tape in the hope of slowing down any future corrosion. All very time-consuming!
Ray Marchetta came by to do some more on the Navtex and chart-plotter wiring - I'd spent ages on Sunday soldering together some fine wires to get NMEA input from the C70 Raymarine unit to the FLS (Echopilot forward-looking sounder) - but made an embarrassingly, stupid mistake doing so - so complete wasted effort!! Oh well,.....! The Navtex coax connector below the antenna needed replacing and Ray soldered the wires into a new (gold-plated!) connector - so it should last a good time. I later finished connecting up the chart-table instruments - all there now working fine (sigh of relief!) - and put in a new support for the C70 display at the chart table - means I can have it up or down - useful having the radar display down below on overnight passage. Still some wiring issues to sort out tomorrow, but basic instrument wiring now almost complete.
Dive cylinder refills didn't happen today - tomorrow, hopefully. Tanks are stored over the ground-plates under the aft bunk so had to be moved anyway for access and laying of that copper strip.
Trying to finish a book over dinner tonight - "White Slaves of Maquinna" - fascinating true story of John R. Jewitt's 'enslavement 'after capture at Nootka on the west coast of Vancouver Island by Chief Maquinna in March 1803. Having sailed the area, including Friendly Cove where Nootka lies, last Sept/Oct, I've found the book particularly interesting. (And I need to return it to the friends I borrowed it from!)