Tuesday saw the copper strip-laying/connecting to ground-plate finlly finished with - I 'concertina-ed' the excess with duct tape in between the folds for insulation - so I've effectively 25ft of 3" copper between the ATU and the groundplate. All was covered over with duct tape for protection. Nice to think it's finished with! I dealt with the wood partition by the ATU - hinged it, so in future I'll have easier access.
The dive tanks were collected by Michael of nearby 'California Diving' - too heavy to take far on my bike! Ready (serviced and filled) by Thursday, when I took in my regulator for servicing also - that might take several days to do - hopefully not too long.
Wednesday, Ray came by to check the voltage at the Navtex antenna coax connector - seemed OK (5V) but nothing at display - need to check at the antenna itself - but that needs a ladder .... Later that morning, Dong came and changed the tachometer on the engine - it has been behaving erratically, so I thought it best to change it while I could.
Took Wednesday afternoon off work - I'd been invited by Craig Mueller to sail with him and his crew on 'Brushfire' - a Sparkman & Stephens 51 - beautiful boat, built in UK in1969. We were lucky in that there was a nice gentle breeze most of the time, occasionally gusting up, and we had a lovely sail - winning the race! Fog horns sounded but no fog descended as we sailed out seaward past Pt. Loma & then returned to Shelter Island. We celebrated our success with a couple of Mai Tais at the restaurant overlooking Shelter Cove Marina where 'Brushfire' has her berth. I didn't get much more work done that evening...!
Thursday, rigger Mark Butler replaced the damaged starboard forward lower shroud and generally checked the rigging - we checked the tension very easily using my new Loos tension gauge. I'd started to tidy up while searching the forepeak for my missing wind transducer which is supposed to be replacing the old one at the masthead - when it's been found.... Getting on well with the tidying & making of lists, but not found the missing item yet!
Neither the replacement AIS unit nor the new Garmin chartplotter have arrived from the UK - both should have arrived by today - UPS didn't keep to their promised 10am delivery for the AIS unit.... I hope it comes Friday - it needs to be fitted to make sure it's working OK - it will be useful on future passages. What did arrive were back-up paper charts for Australia, Indian Ocean & S. Africa - ones I didn't have previously. I now have all the paper charts I need for my circumnavigation - so if we're hit by lightning, I can still navigate safely without instruments and laptop!! (Hopefully, I'd have time beforehand to put one laptop and a handheld GPS in the steel-lined oven to survive any strike!)
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