7th June
Elemiah's Atlantic Adventure
Ian Cole and Rosemary Bointon
Sun 8 Jun 2008 13:19
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