Sailing - At Last

  After 6 months of maintenance efforts to get Tides Inn ready to cruise again, its time for some sea trials. We need to spend time afloat checking out all the systems and see what is going to break before heading south for the next 6 months.
 

     Hurricane Florence provided a good opportunity to spend several days at sea to test the boat's readiness to head off for several months. Our marina requires the larger boats to vacant the marina for named storms heading our way so we had to leave the marina. Good news was that Florence stayed down to the south and we only saw 25-35kts of wind and only about 1ft of waves in the protected area where we anchor.  We had to leave the marina on Wednesday (storm arriving Thursday night) and we waited for the winds and water levels to return to normal before returning - so came back on the next Monday - giving us 6 days at sea. 

     The best result of spending 6 days afloat was it provided the time necessary to train our Lab Rivah to go potty on the boat. Just like our previous Lab, she took about 3 days of holding it before she had to go and learned her potty spot is on a rug on the bow. By the 6th day, she had the routine down and even asked to go forward when necessary.  She like the wind blowing over her, but not when she is trying to do her business.

  

   We had one full day of rainy, windy weather but the rest of the six days was relatively sunny but breezy. 

  

   All systems are working and we experienced no significant problems during the week. We have been out in the Chesapeake overnight two more times since Florence and it looks like the boat is ready to head south.  Now we just have to get me ready to head south. Heart procedure scheduled for 17 Oct.

Top Of The Mast Work - Last Items on the To-Do List

   Today was the day to finish off the Tides Inn refurbishment To-Do list - a long process we started in early April. We had to replace the anchor lightbulb, lubricate the anemometer and windex, and check all the mast top equipment for condition, then replace the radar reflector and whisker pole topping lift at the spreader level.
   Sue is our mast top worker and I am the hoister.

   She is on her way up. I hoist her on the spare main halyard and we use the spinnaker halyard as a safety backup. Tools and materials are in the bosun seat bag.  The spare halyard leads back to the cockpit where I winch her up. This time we both had our phones on speaker and were able to easily communicate via cell phone.
 

     Here is the line and winch that lifts her up. On the way up I can keep the rope clutch locked so there are two levels of safety that the halyard won't slip. On the way down, I have to open the clutch and its only me to ensure the line feeds out slowly. 

   Our mast is 56feet up from the water. That's a good height that lets us easily pass under the Intra-Coastal bridges which are normally 65 feet, but still pretty high up for the worker who has to change the light bulb.

   

   At this point, Sue has the anchor light bulb replaced and she is reinstalling the plexiglass housing. Our light fixture has a tri-color on top and the anchor light below. You can see the red port light of the tri-color and Sue's hand blocks the clear white anchor light. 

   

    In addition to changing the light bulb, the other key maintenance item was to lubricate the anemometer so that we get an accurate reading of the wind speed. As it accumulates dirt and dust it slows down making one think the wind is not as strong as reality. We don't have any photos of the Sue vs wasp encounter.  After waving nicely several times, Sue had to resort to WD 40 spray to encourage the wasp to leave.  We do have a video of the power boater that ignored the "no-wake" signs and nearly passed the entire marina at high speed. but Mark yelled and waved him down. Those no-wake rules around marinas are there for a reason - someone might be working at the top of a mast.

      The other job we had to do was re-hang our radar reflector, which fell down right at the end of our last sailing season. It turns out the stainless ring connecting the shackle and radar reflector mount wore through from the constant rocking and rubbing after about 10 years of service. Another item to add to our routine maintenance list.

     We decided this time to eliminate the ring completely and use an extended shackle to connect to the radar reflector mount. Cuts out one more potential failure item. We run a flag halyard through a small block at the bottom of the radar reflector, run down to deck level, that holds the reflector taut (but doesn't prevent rocking) and provides a port side flag halyard.
   The final task was to reinstall the whisker pole topping lift line through the block on the front of the mast in front of Sue. I took the line down to wash it as all our running rigging accumulated extensive dirt while spending 2 years in the boatyard. All has been washed or replaced now.

   All jobs accomplished, its time to return to deck level. Another safe and successful trip to the mast top.

   Here's a couple views from the top:

New Dinghy

   Sue and I have talked about buying a hard bottom RIB dinghy to replace our high pressure floor dinghy we have now, to provide more peace of mind when exploring islands in the Bahamas - so we don't have to worry about punching a hole in the dinghy bottom on coral. However, our Avon high pressure floor dinghy has been working great since we bought it in 2003 and has the advantage of being able to roll up and store on deck when making offshore passages.
   Unfortunately for the Avon, when I inflated it this year, after two years in storage, it has slow leaks in two of the filler valves. I expect these leaks could be repaired, but the dinghy is 15 years old, well beyond normal service life and has seen better days.
  Meanwhile, Defender was having a sale of Achilles dinghies, which we have been investigating. So, we are the new owners of an Achilles HB300-FX hard bottom dinghy with a foldable transom. This is the compromise solution which has a solid fiberglass floor to protect from coral encounters, but has a foldable transom so we could fold it up and store it on the foredeck if we were to make a lengthy offshore passage (like to the Virgin Islands). But that would be a very rare event, so for normal usage in coastal waters where we can watch the weather/seas, we will just lift the dinghy on our davits.