Day 482 A massage and more tasks

I took off this morning for my first massage.  The top of my back and left arm has been bothering me since my return from Denver.  I think my bag weighed too much and I carried it just a bit to far.  I had it done by Judy whom we met two years ago when we first moved Zephyr to Newport.  She and Ted, her husband, live on another sailboat here at the marina.  It's been great to see them again since our return last Thursday.  They've been a big help since we got back.  Judy worked and worked and got all the kinks out and the rest of the day has been great.

I bought more charts today at Englund's Marine to get us to San Francisco and beyond.  While we have several electronic chart plotters, we feel it best to have the same thing in paper in paper form so that just in case something should cause a power failure or a computer crash, we will still know where we are and can find our way to a safe harbor.  We carry a hand held GPS as well as several fixed units.  It never hurts to be prepared. 

Below are pictures of some of our rigging.   When it was done, the attachments for the shrouds were too wide for the chain plates(holds the wire onto the boat that keep the mast from falling down) causing a gap that continually caught the lines that control our big Genoa sail at the bow.

We decided to add some stainless steel washers to the fitting to force the outside of the fitting to come closer inboard so the line will run free.  The pictures above so the problem and how the addition of the washers solved it.  The rigging on the side facing the dock was easy.  The side of the boat on the opposite side was different.  Tracy came up with a solution.  I would sit in the chair we use to go up the mast and she would lower me over the side until I was at the correct height to do the repairs.  It was much easier than leaning over the life lines and having to do the job upside down.  Now there will be no more problems as we tack the Genoa.  It had caused us to have to leave the cockpit and pull the lines free.

We got our new Hydrovane auto steering assembly ready for travel this afternoon.  I went down the ladder and tried to fit the rudder to the bottom of the post.  If you click on the pictures, it blows them up for much better viewing.  I sort of lost my balance and promptly fell into the water.  Not all the way,but far enough that I came out quite soaked.  Since I was already wet, it made getting the rudder on much easier.  Seeing how much fun I had doing this in a placid marina, I can't imagine what fun it would have been out in the open ocean.  I attached the red vane at the top of the unit and now she is ready to do her job--steer Zephyr when we are out in the ocean.

We are hoping to be taking off tomorrow(Tuesday) for either Coos Bay or Crescent City.  We're not sure which or either.  It depends on the weather as always.  Several boats left today and one left about 2200 this evening and will be sailing all night--wind permitting.  The forecast for the next few days is a bit mixed and we won't make a decision till tomorrow morning as to whether we will set off or stay one more day when the weather window appears(at least so far) to be a bet better.  There is no real hurry to get anywhere any more and we are with some nice people here in Newport.

If we are here tomorrow, there will be more projects still to do so we will just wait and see.  The electrical outlet in the galley I thought I had fixed so that the reverse polarity light stayed out is now causing some problems.  While on shore power or with power coming from the Honda Generator, it works fine but if you turn on the inverter to use the power from the batteries to make it work, it doesn't work at all and says the wires are wrong and that's what I changed before that allowed it to work right.  If we're here tomorrow, I'll start in on that project.  If not, well, it will just have to wait till the next stop.

It's off to bed to see what tomorrow brings.  If there is no blog tomorrow night, you will know we took off and will have more stories when we reach our next destination.  Hopefully Mother Nature will give us a break this time.

Stay tuned for more.