May 15, 2009

the sails



after all the hard work on the boat interior and exterior and all electronics, the rebuilt engine and absolutely all the new stuff, we could certainly not forget about the (in the words of our sail maker) "... most important part of the sailboat, the sails of course!!!!!!..." so he fixed the working jib, the storm jib and the genoa, and he sold us a beautiful spinnaker and did for puerto seguro a brand new main sail that also to use his words "... fits like a glove..." perfect and beautiful sail thanks to tom :-)!!! we raised it the night we got it and because of how thick the material is esteban actually hurt his elbow putting the sail away...

May 11, 2009

new fridge



don't really know why we changed it now..... but we did. we were actually happy with the old fridge but it consumed too much electricity so after the boat show and the work of a good sales person at the fridge booth, we bought a new system that required installing a cooling plate in the hull. so esteban did that and later came bob and took out the good old fridge and installed the new one.... i can only tell you that as of the date that i am writing this post we have already stared the trip and use the fridge and it works great, but we really have not noticed a lot of energy savings.....

May 8, 2009

mighty mase




the generator, of course!!!!!!! we considered the generator to be so important that we gave up the aft bed in order to use the space to install it, and also use it as storage for the rest of millions of things we have with us. the beauty of installing it next to the storage is that all the stuff insulate the noise. installing it was an entire day and thanks to bob we now have it running!! it was a hard project with complications and very difficult and uncomfortable spaces to work, but well worth it, this will make the difference of being able to charge our batteries without hooking up to shore power, so we really can stay at anchor if we want and keep our costs low by not going docking in the marinas so much.

May 2, 2009

otto



a.k.a the auto pilot, or a very reliable third crew member on board. we took the raymarine pilot from galatea and installed the display together with the other instruments several months ago but we still had to install the arm which desmond, our "pirate" friend :-) did for us. thank thank thank you desmond!!! we will think of you when we are sailing in auto, so I would think we will be thinking about you quite a lot!!!

May 1, 2009

the running rigging



first of all a BIG thank you to justin; i think we could not have done it without him. he came ever day to the boat for several days to help us set every single line, to teach us knots (me I should say, i then need to pass the knowledge to esteban) and to basically share with us all of his experience from climbing and sailing and spending time with us. not only we enjoyed his company but we now have all new halyards, the old but improved boom, a spinnaker pole, jack lines, reefs, and just about every line on deck and cockpit to control every point of each sail!!!!