So much boat work… but we’re almost ready

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Our one year delay will, thankfully, be only a one year delay. My partner and I are nearly ready to go, and even have a fairly solid date for untying the lines: April 24th. As I write this, we’re living out of a hotel while the boat is hauled out to deal with some under-the-waterline modifications we need to make. Hopefully we’ll be back in the water in about two weeks, and then we’ll have about a month to finish our prep.

But first, let’s back up a little bit and take a look at what we’ve gotten done in the last eight months since I last posted. Not just boat work either; I finished a few knives and am finishing up a few more in the last few weeks until I close my workshop up.

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Life changes plans/Updates on boat systems

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It’s been a lot longer than I would have liked since I made a post here. Boat work hasn’t stopped, but as will become obvious from this post, we haven’t untied the lines or started heading up the Inside Passage. Unfortunately my partner has been dealing with a mysterious health issue since the beginning of the year, and we’ve delayed our plans to deal with it.

But, in the mean time, there’s always boat work. The schedule has changed in a lot of ways, but many projects have been completed and we’ve had time to get a feel for our electrical system and solar panels. The short version? The results are extremely promising.

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Solar panels and ethernet

While we finish the Raymarine install–just some final mounting things to get done that have been waiting on materials to arrive–plenty more has been done. More of the Raymarine gear is installed, including the rudder sensor and linear drive, the SeaTalkNG/NMEA2000 network has been running beautifully for weeks now, and I’ve gotten the Signal K server all set up. With the last step, I also added a RuuviTag environmental sensor outside that is linked to the CerboGX over bluetooth, providing temperature, humidity, and pressure data.

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Offshore Personal Survival with Sail Canada

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Over the long (American) Thanksgiving Weekend, my partner and I drove up to Vancouver, BC, to take part in Sail Canada’s Offshore Personal Survival Course. This is training required for anyone doing offshore racing in OSR (Offshore Special Regulations) categories 0, 1, and 2. While we don’t currently have plans to do any racing, we felt that taking the course would do well to help prepare us should the worst happen while sailing offshore.

As cruisers, we were in the minority in the class–only 4 of us weren’t dedicated racers. The instructors actually really like having cruisers attend, as very few actually do take this training despite sailing offshore, and we were very glad to have taken it, both for all the classroom discussion but also the experience of being in our full offshore gear in the water and inflating & boarding life rafts in multiple ways (as well as flipping it over if it’s deployed inverted).

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Installing the new Raymarine gear (part 1)

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We’re about halfway through getting our new Raymarine nav gear set up, and while we’ve been doing that (routing cables appears to be the majority of the work, unfortunately, see my rant at the end of this post) I’ve been working on a few minor projects, as well as taking delivery of a few more major items (and future projects).

While upgrading from the original 2007/2008 year Raymarine nav electronics, I’m taking the opportunity to link up other devices to the NMEA 2000 network (aka SeatalkNG, Raymarine’s branded NMEA 2000 network and plugs) as well as run a few additional cables from the nav/distribution area to the helm.

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