Great excitement last week, with the first proof of the solar panel charging. It is hard to explain why the sight of +2A on the battery monitor could be so pleasing. Possibly the expectation, from years of experience, that plugging in a new input and removing the protective cardboard would be followed by 2 days of chasing faults around the boat with a voltmeter. But no, on a sunny day it appears we can power the fridge! In daytime at least. Normally milk glued to the bottom of the bottle is associated with accidental yohurt-making.  But in this case it was frozen. Must sort the thermostat out…

Alex is pleased with the deck. The hot weather last week was the perfect opportunity to clean and seal the teak.  Take it from me it’s a lof of cleaning: a basic thorough clean followed by teak cleaner, teak restorer and 2 coats of sealer.  My hands have only just recovered!  Fortunately, you can only do once in a while as it is aggressive on the deck as well as your hands. So I can take it easy for the rest of the year.

The new standing rigging has arrived! It is sitting, coiled and shiny, in the back of the car and tomorrow we will fit it to the mast. As ever, it has been weeks since we took it all apart so the hope is that you can find all the right bits and put them together in the right order. “Interesting” that we have to fit the fitting that secures the base of the forestay ourselves. The forestay is supplied as wire cut slightly over length so it can be fed back down the tube that the genoa is furled around.  We have to cut it to length and make up the fitting that will hold the whole mast up.  Unlike all the other wires, there is no redundancy for this one – if it fails under load, we loose the mast. No pressure then. Still debating whether to shorten it a little. The rig has a lot of rake and bend – much more than recommended as an upper limit by my rigging handbook. Taking 50mm off the length moves the top of the mast forward by around 160mm. But she sails well so presumably it is supposed to look like that?

It can be difficult to know when to trust your  judgement. The locker under the forecabin had an air vent set in.  Badly done, didn’t look original. To me it looks like the bulkhead extends above the waterline and would protect you from a hole in the bows. Why would you cut a hole in that?  Maybe something to do with ventilation for the battery for the horrible bowthruster? We filled it in, anyway, it felt like the right thing to do…