May 26, 2016

Other than my parked Mini being rolled into by a 20-ton dumptruck, it was a pretty good week. I solved the autopilot problem, finished the restoration of the locker in the aft head, finished the partition in a cockpit locker to protect the electrics, nearly finished storm covers for the aft portholes in the aft cabin, and made a good start on panels to close off the aft end of the cockpit. Even the weather was delightful. Dealing with the damaged Mini is no fun, though.

May 19, 2016

I worked on multiple projects this week as well as talked with vendors about sails, series drogue, autopilot and deck awning. Still wrestling with the HIN issue. Right now the difficulty is the first three letters that are supposed to be the manufacturers identification code. If Circadian were a US boat, I could just look it up online. But she's English, and the manufacturer is long gone. I've contacted a friend who has a Salar 40 as well as the Salar Owners Group to see if anyone has an answer, but haven't gotten any responses yet. I'm about 90% finished with installing a small panel to protect the electrics next to the engine room vent in the side of the cockpit, but fear that in the process I've mucked up the cable connectors to the autopilot, which now is not working. I'll be trouble-shooting that soon. I'm about half way along in repairing the shelves in the aft head locker.  They'll be needed when I have crew along.  I also patched a whole in my old surfboard/kayak so I can donate it to the outrigger club raffle and washed some of the grunge off the boat. Still feel like I'm climbing a sand dune, but I am making progress.

Weather has been May gray, with a couple of hours of sun starting late in the afternoon.

May 12, 2016

It was a pretty productive week: the weather was mild and I took care of a couple of items on the list.

 I finished converting the nav lights to LEDs and chainplates for securing the Jordan Series Drogue to the transom were installed. The chainplates are massive, but they each need to be able to handle peak loads of up to 14,000 pounds! They are so big and so well secured that the only way for the system to fail would be to tear the boat in half. Not likely since the Salar is such a tank! I also got some answers to an officialdom problem: Circadian, although documented, does not have a hull identification number (HIN). That could be a serious problem in Mexico. After quite a bit of research, some false starts and a trip to the DMV, I finally got some answers from the USCG Vessel Documentation Center. It seems I just need to make up an HIN that meets the legal guidelines and submit a form 1258 with a check. Hopefully I'll get to that next week.

I spent the weekend in LA with Carol and we did a nice hike up to the Griffith Observatory.