Well, we got a lot done this short week. We’re preparing to depart for our shakedown cruise on thursday when David gets off work. Our plans is to stay a few days in the bay, then go offshore to Freeport and bring the ICW back. We’re now about 7 weeks from our cruising departure date, and every week we knock more off the list. Actually, there really isn’t anything big left on the list, and nothing that would keep us from going. Hopefully the shakedown cruise doesn’t produce any major issues that need to be added to our list. This will be our last update until we return in a couple of weeks. Check our Ship’s Log around the first week of October to see how it went.
Ordered Watermaker - Ordered a Pur 40E watermaker this week from Katadyn. The watermaker is a machine that extracts fresh water from clean salt water. When you’re on a boat in the middle of no place, one needs to use water wisely. It’s not like being at home where you just turn the faucet on and water always comes out. Our boat holds 90 gallons of water. The watermaker is a small one at 1.5 gallons per hour, but also draws only 4 amps. We decided on the 40E for a variety of reasons, including budget constraints, limited space for installation, and lower cost of maintenance. It should be here when we return from our shake down cruise, it’s the last item to install.
New Anchor Line - We pulled our anchor chain and rode out so that we could mark the chain and rode in 25’ increments, this will allow us to know how much we’re putting out when anchoring. We have 200’ of 5/16 HT chain, but only had 100’ of line. In the event we found ourselves anchoring in deeper than anticipated waters or if a bad storm comes through, we wanted to make sure we had more line to pay out, so the 100’ was replaced with 200’.
Depth Sounder Interfacing - Interfaced the depth sounder with the rest of our electronics. This involved running a single NMEA wire from the depth sounder to the NMEA multiplexer (click here for more info on the multiplexer). The multiplexer is the hub of all the interfacing between the electronics on Bruadair. We can now see the depth of the water on the repeater which is mounted below at the nav station.
PC Interfacing - Ran a USB cable from the NMEA multiplexer to the laptop computer. This will provide GPS information such as latitude and longitude to the PC's computer based navigation software, and will allow the laptop to send commands to the autopilot. The navigation software on our laptop will be primarily used for planning purposes, but can easily act as a back up to our chartplotter should it ever fail.
Uploaded Waypoints and Routes - Used the navigation software on our laptop to plan our routes for the shakedown cruise as well as entered the waypoints received from friends for the entrance to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. The waypoints and routes were then transferred to the JRC chartplotter via a home made serial cable.
New Anchor Light - Had Kevin from Stix-n-Riggn install a new anchor light at the top of the mast. It uses less current than our previous one and even has a photocell so that it will turn on and off automatically. We had Kevin leave the old one in place in the event we ever need to switch back.
Lightning Dissipator - Before our friends Dan and Jamie left in May on their Baba 35 to Florida, they gave us a left over lightning dissipator. Well, since we had Kevin up the mast to install the new anchor light, we had asked him to install the dissipator as well. It is supposed to work in mysterious ways to reduce the likelihood of getting struck by lightning but I don’t think there is any hard proof that it does. Since we had it we decided to put it up, couldn’t hurt but we sure hope it works.
Engine Maintenance - Changed the engine oil and filter as well as the checked the transmission fluid and antifreeze level. I believe all the engine maintenance is now done.
New Main Sail - The new main sail from Bank Sails arrived this week. Absolutely beautiful! Thanks Mark, we hope to enjoy our new sail for many years to come. The new main sail is made of 8.5oz Dacron with two deep reefing points. We hope that our previous main sail cover will fit the new sail as David spent a lot of time making the cover only a couple of months ago.
Fishing Gear - Bought a couple of fishing poles and an assortment of tackle and lures. We want to be able to do some trolling while we’re sailing, along with fishing elsewhere when at anchor. If we catch something, great and if not maybe we’ll buy a fish.
Plate for Bowsprit - When the anchors are at rest in their rollers on the bowsprit, they seem to hug the bowsprit tightly which in turns nicks and gouges the wood. We didn’t want to keep damaging our beautiful bowsprit, so we commisioned Casey at Mockingbird Marine to design and install a stainless steel plate to protect the bowsprit. Now the anchors rest against the plate and not directly against the wooden bowsprit.
Check Valve - Installed a check valve (one way valve) on the line that provides fresh water to one of our manual pumps. This was done to keep air from leaking back into the water line when using the electric water pump.
Snorkeling Gear - Our new friends Mitch and Debbie offered us some of their used but good snorkeling gear, so we’re headed over there tonight to pick up a few things. Many thanks Mitch and Debbie!
New Dingy Davit Lines - The previous lines on our dingy davits were just long enough to drop the dingy to the water here at the dock. One of our concerns was that if we were in an anchorage with some swells that there would not be enough line to drop the dingy to the water. Rather than have the dingy bouncing off the davits, we decided to buy longer line that would allow the dingy to reach the water in light to moderate swells. In heavy swells we probably won’t be launching the dingy.
More organizing - Got the dock box emptied. Put what we needed into the boat and everything else was donated to our friends. Dan was kind enough to let us store our old main sail in his storage unit (thanks Dan). Everything is inventoried and stowed on the boat with the exception of provisions.