5th June

Elemiah's Atlantic Adventure
Ian Cole and Rosemary Bointon
Fri 6 Jun 2008 02:34
Today we met our last crew member, Curtis, and it is clear that we are all going to get on just fine. Curtis and Hannah arrived down at the boat just in time to help bend on the mainsail. I rushed up to North Sails and got 18 sail ties but it wasn't enough - I had to go back and get 6 more.

Ian and Roger went over to Covey and picked up the sail covers and some of the supplies for the boat that we had ordered such as flares.

We decided where to put the life raft. A bit tricky. It was too big to go right aft as it would either be in the way for mooring or would cover up the emergency tiller point. The next most convenient place was too close to the mainsheet - the mainsheet would have snagged on it all the time. The next most convenient place was over the lights in the interior and drilling through the coach roof might have risked drilling through the cables for the lights. Eventually we found a place that did not snag anything and was not likely to put a bolt through any cables.

We also tried a few ways for stowing the dinghy which Ronald from Covey Island brought over for us. We have ended up putting it athwart amidships. We must remember to buy some rowlocks - here they call them oarlocks, although here most boats seem to have what we would call tholes - ie two straight pins that go through holes in the gunwales.

Michelle came this afternoon and fitted the dodger. It's a great fit and the windows mean good visibility. There is a small problem though. The mainsheet block (the pulley through which you pull in the mainsail) is fixed in such a way that it can fall from side to side. This means that it needs a very large slit in the dodger - too large in fact. Also we noticed that the mainsheet block is banging on the receiver for our new Garmin plotter. The block could break it and then we would be without our main GPS (global positioning system). Not good. We think the solution is to get a different kind of mainsheet block.

With all the sails bent on and the sail covers over them, Elemiah is progressively getting more ship shape. I forgot to take any photos today - i will make up for it tomorrow.

Rosemary and Ian