August 22, 3013

A busy, diverse week.  To make sure the boat would be ready for sea soon, I asked my circumnavigator friend Joseph to help me tune the rig using his Loos tension gauge.  Very easy.  Now I'd like my own gauge, but the one I need is $250, so not in my immediate future.  I continued work on the oars and in the process once again proved that haste makes waste.  On the plus side, I was able to solve a problem that I had erroneously thought I'd already solved.  My autopilot once again failed to power up, despite my recently having installed and wired a new ground bus that seemed to have fixed it.  After a good deal of head-scratching and electrical sleuthing, I noticed a connector seemed to have moved slightly on the wire.  A slight tug and it popped right off:  bad crimp.  Hard to find; easy to fix.  To relieve an idiosyncratic personal irritation, and do a quick project that would make a visible difference, I decided to refurbish the dorade vents.  After cleaning and prepping them, I sprayed them with Plasti Dip rubber coating.  It looks fine, but I have no idea how it will hold up.  Check back in six months or a year and we'll know.

On a personal note, I took Carol (in the new Mini) to a very romantic place for her birthday: the Ranch House in Ojai.   Lovely setting, good service, great food and a singer/guitarist who seemed to be able to channel James Taylor.  Most importantly, Carol liked it.  On the other end of the spectrum, I had to have a biopsy on a mole this week.  The doctor thinks it's benign, but we need to check it to be sure.  Results next week....





















1 comment:

  1. Clean up dorade vents just have to happen. I hate dirty vents.

    I had a tuning device that worked just fine, certainly not as fancy or expensive as the one you mentioned.

    restaurant is beautiful and +1 for Carol.

    Happy bday to both of you.

    beautiful flowers for me!!

    ReplyDelete