So just finished our 3rd Friday on Vida. We arrived at about 12:30pm (just into Friday) and everything was dry, apart from the ground, obviously been a lot of rain in Beaumaris recently.
The first task of the day was to prepare both masts for being taken down. I’ll do separate posts on our plans for the rig (which we are very excited about), however, today did include accepting a quote for some work. So both booms are off, all the split pins that stop the rigging undoing itself are off, all the wiring (4 wires main mast, 3 wires for the mizzen) is disconnected. Most significantly for the upgrades to come, the non-standard gooseneck (the joint that holds the boom to the mast) has come off and been attacked with my angle grinder.
Then we spent hours on very careful measuring and calculations for the windows. There are 14 (7 per side) and they are 7 different sizes. Now waiting for a price from someone who has been very helpful in working out what we should do.
Meanwhile Jane made significant progress on creating cardboard templates for the cushions for the after cabin (hopefully it won’t be long before we can sleep on a proper mattress rather than our inflatable camping mats).
We also made some progress on planning, particularly electrics, which is going to be very important to get right.
A nice point of the day was meeting a whole lot of people from the NWVYC (their clubhouse is very close to us at the moment), our membership application is in processing. Will be good to be able to use their showers 🙂 More importantly it will provide a base to launch our dinghy from and hopefully access to a mooring. They do some cruises in company (last Spring to Ireland for example) which sound like a good way for us to build our experience.
Late this evening we walked into Beaumaris, including a very romantic moonlit walk along the pier (NB wearing head-torches is not good for romance).
Saturday will include some more measuring, planning and yet more cleaning and removal of redundant stuff to give better access to what we really need.
Definitely not as warm today and this evening, but it was still a beautiful day and good progress made 🙂
Sustainable Sailing 