Here is a list of small but important projects that we completed and crossed off of our list this week.

Secured Doors - Finished installing the rest of the barrel bolts on our cabinet doors. Each door has a finger latch in which one puts their finger through the hole and releases the latch. Our concern was that in rough seas something might shift within the cabinet and accidentally open the door, thus causing everything to spill out. The barrel bolts will allow us to secure the doors from accidentally opening, and we only need to utilize them in rough sea conditions.

Sold Van - Sold the van this week, so sadly we are now a one car household. It’ll take some getting used to as we have always had separate cars. Fortunately West Marine is only a couple blocks away, our friends are close by and we only have to cope for two months.

Ordered New Main Sail - Removed the main sail and dropped it off at Bank Sails. We took it in to have it inspected and as it turns out, it’s the original sail to our 20 year old boat. It has some life left to it, but it is stretched a lot and is probably not going to be a reliable sail for us for the cruising we want to do. So we enlisted Mark at Bank Sails to construct us a new main sail with two deep reefs, 8.5 oz dacron and all the other good stuff. Should have it  in about two weeks. We’ll keep the old main sail as a back up and will probably stow it under our aft cabin berth.

Replaced Topping Lift - Replaced the aging topping lift while the main sail was off the boom. Also inspected all the other lines and concluded that they were serviceable. The rest of the running rigging along the boom looks good, so we didn’t replace anything else.

12v Outlets - Installed 2 12v outlets by the port settee for various uses such as our clip on fans (we chose the clip on fans so we can move them about the cabin where their needed), as well as for our laptop which we use at the dinette. Also, if our JRC chartplotter ever were to fail, we can power our hand held from any of the 12v outlets throughout the boat.

Washed Boat - Washed the boat, polished the stainless steel dorades and hand rails. Contemplated waxing the boat this week as well, but procrastination won over on me and I took a long nap instead.

Manual Water Pump - Found out that the manual fresh water pump at the galley sink is leaking, so we turned off the valve to it. It’s leaking water around the threaded seals, and when the electric water pump is working it actually sucks air into the system causing the electric pump not to turn off. I now have to decide if I want to try rebuilding it again (did it in May 2002), or since they are 20 years old just buy a new one. We’ll let you know in a couple of weeks.

Dock Party! - Our good friends Dan and Pam had a great dock party on their Irwin 41, Parlay. We enjoyed good food and great company. Thanks Dan and Pam, we had a wonderful time and needed the break!