Splash Friday

I spoke to Grant and Ed this morning, and they're going to put me in the water on Friday. Grant said that they'll let me stay on a courtesy mooring for a week or two, so that should be plenty of time to make the final preparations. With the weather getting colder by the day, I don't want to stay any longer than necessary.

I spent all day today preparing the rest of the hardware for remounting. It stopped raining some time after lunch, but has been pretty cold all day with the wind has been gusting to over 30 mph. I had to adjust the cover a couple times, but other making a lot of noise, and scaring Zoe, it hasn't been a problem.

I have a few more things to clean up, but got almost everything ready today, including the damaged turning blocks. Someone must have dropped something heavy on one of them, because the upper flange is bent and the edged of one of the sheaves is broken off. I took them apart and cleaned them up, but still need to straighten the flange. I can't replace the broken sheave right now, but since it's a double, I can still use the lower one for the jib sheets. I guess the upper one was normally used for the spinnaker, but I don't plan to deploy mine any time soon, so that's not an issue.

I also got my two small yacht lamps, thread, and canvas today. I'll store the thread and canvas for later, but went ahead and broke out the lamps and lit them in the cabin this afternoon. They don't put out a lot of light, but all in all work very well. I might get some bigger lamps for the saloon and use the two small ones for the forecastle, but I'll wait till I get to Houston before I buy anything else. Maybe I can find some second hand ones that work well and put out a little more light.

Zoe watch:

She's been really good all day, but it's time for our evening walk, so I better wake her up. Although the rain stopped, it's still cold and windy, so she's still wearing her fleece. In fact, I switched to my Gill rain gear top this morning due to the wind, and will probably wear it from now on. I'd been wearing a North Face jacket with liner, but it doesn't cut the wind and rain nearly as well as the rain gear.

I may need to get, or make, something similar for Zoe, however, the fleece has been working really well so far -- it stays warm even when it's wet. Maybe I can use the canvas to make her a little rain jacket to help keep her dry. But let's hope it doesn't come to that -- my sewing skills aren't that good yet.