finally progress

Yesterday and today was a day of strides and man do we need a few big strides.

Ben connected our ground plate - he has been working on a copper ground system that runs through out the inside of the hull and connects to a big plate outside the hull, this is all necessary so we can use our SSB.  Yeah! that is done. Now to get into the water to see if the rest works.

Just before we got to the boatyard there was a lightning strike. It hit a boat across from us but many of our neighbors electronics stopped working and of course ours is no different.  So for the past 3 months we have been chasing the cats tail in a circle again! around and around. the lightning seemed to have effected our chart plotter, radar, and now we find out possibly our AIS is not working... Grrrr that is all I can say is grrrr! It might have effected our SSB too but we won't know that until we get in the water.

Oh back to Strides: we fiber glassed the rudder, the front chest lid cover is close to getting done, we sanded and varnished the small chests, the solar panels went in and they work!!! (so far)... i have been cataloging all the extra parts we have for the boat and been collecting a list of things that we still need to buy.  As one boater put it... "There is no way each boater could bring 2 of everything nor could we forecast what things will go wrong and that is why we have a boating community to help each other out."

we have been trying to put things in lockers/cubby holes all around the boat. we have an extra set of sails that are good. Those we just tucked in under the bow birth. they are big so it is nice they actually fit in there out of the way. I have been ziploc-ing most all of our things since last year anything that will get moldy - will And anything that will rust - will, And anything that supposed to stay dry will get wet.

for food we have found a great place (thanks for the tip Ron) for canned meats. We just had canned beef and it was amazing. We have bought many different kinds of sprouts for some fun "fresh" thing to eat while sailing. We have all the charts on our electronics and now we need to pick up paper pilot charts.

well I should go and figure out my taxes before we leave.

that's all for now folks. more updates as we get closer.
blessings
Pam n Ben