Still working
There is not much for us to report today although the Covey Island
team worked all day on the boat. They have been doing the electrics
and have changed all the deck lights from ordinary ones to LEDs so
that they don't use so much battery power. Elemiah is still not ready
to go off for a shakedown cruise and I am now giving up estimating.
It will happen when it is ready to happen.
The mainsheet block problem
We had another long debate about the mainsheet block banging on the
Garmin satellite GPS receiver. We are now going to move it so that
there is no chance of the mainsheet block damaging it. We still have
the problem of the mainsheet going through the dodger to the winch.
Where it goes through, the mainsheet can move too far from side to
side and we need to restrict it so that it does not damage the
dodger. We think that we have found a solution to that. We have
bought a block which stands upright from the deck. The mainsheet can
come down from the mainsheet block through the block on the deck and
then onto the winch. This will have a beneficial side effect of
helping prevent riding turns on the winch as currently the angle at
which the mainsheet arrives from the block to the winch is a bit too
acute - it should be more or less horizontal.
Our new teapot
We bought a teapot and a coffeepot - two real essentials. Michaela,
Hannah's sister, has agreed to knit us a tea cosy. Michaela has
already knitted each of us beautiful warm scarves and hats for the
trip. Very useful!
More liferaft
We also spent ages looking for a strop to tether the liferaft to the
boat. If you abandon ship, what you do is throw the lifeboat
overboard and it automatically inflates. You keep it tied onto the
boat until everybody is on it and you have transferred the equipment
you need from the boat to the raft. Then as the boat sinks, you cut
the rope. So it needs to be securely attached to the boat for that
short time.
Rosemary and Ian
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