Day 50 Another nice day in Newport-2 in a row!

Another nice day in Newport.  The Sun is shining brightly here in Newport and is forecast for the next few days.  Boy it's nice to see it.  I may actually get a tan instead of mold.

Rigging 101:

There are two types of rigging on a sailboat.  "Standing Rigging" holds the mast up-normally big pieces of wire.  "Running Rigging" controls the sails on the boat.   Today, we worked on the "Running Rigging".  

In the cockpit, there are two pieces of equipment that control the sails on Zephyr.  They're called "Rope Clutches".  Rope--now called "Line" once it gets on a boat--don't know why they change the name of it but they do-- run thru a mechanism that can hold the "line" while under the pressure caused by wind on the sails.  Today, we changed these "clutches" for some new ones.  The old ones needed replacing as they would hold the line but sometimes not as tightly as needed and the line slipped.  We installed two new Lewmar D2 Rope Clutches.  Both hold three lines each that come to the cockpit.  It holds the lines that raise the main sail as well as the genoa and other important lines.  There is lots of pressure on these lines and they need to be controlled with no possibility of them slipping and that is just what these new clutches do.  A nice addition to our equipment list.

Tomorrow, back to the wind generator.  We had to put off workings on it today as we had to raise it higher than expected to get it over the teak cap rail on the side of the boat.  When it goes into water mode and is positioned in a horizontal position so that it drags a propeller on the water behind the boat, it was hitting the teak and not getting into the right position.  Raising it allowed us to do that but may have put it in a position where it won't hit the water. We expect to hear from the dealer tomorrow wether we can continue on its installation.

We haven't heard from the company we bought the short wave radio from yet.  Hopefully it has shipped.  It's one of the few things that will keep us here.  We can't leave until it arrives.  It gets installed in Port Townsend.  Matt, our son, got his ham license earlier this year so we will be able to talk even as we cross the oceans of the world.