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

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)

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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Replacing the standing rigging

As Kestrel still had her original standing rigging from 2008, it was time to replace it. This is a pretty standard thing to do for any sailboat before a long trip, particularly if you’ll be going offshore. Having a nice, healthy standing rigging an important aspect of safety. As this was a task I was not able to DIY, I hired Puget Sound Rigging to do the work. They were great to work with and did an excellent job!

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Sailboat work and prep for cruising

It’s been quite a while since I wrote an entry here, and even longer since I regularly updated. But, given my activities since I bought my sailboat and the upcoming cruising plans, it really is time for an update, and hopefully the start of some somewhat regular updates. I would really like to get into the habit of writing weekly entries or even more often once cruising life has begun.

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