My First Saturday 

I can recover at night, but days are hot and humid, to say nothing of rainy and windy.  Still, I am making progress and have met some nice cruisers.   

Our re-rigging project was delayed because of the many boats that went up on reefs throughout the country.  This is a case in point:  serious damage, lost rudders (it's a catamaran), and saildrives ruined.

This is our mast, lying on some old drums.  They did block them on wood, so it seems OK.

Through the past few years, we've had more and more trouble with the VHF.  Truth be told, we don't use it much since we don't stay in harbors and don't talk to many people.  The radio became unusable last season so I tried to check all the boxes with a new VHF and antenna.  I had to think a bit to re-connect the GPS location feed, but as you can see here, I managed.  

And the REAL culprit was the antenna!  I've never seen or heard of an antenna failing, but the mechanism is obvious: salt water intruded and caused corrosion in the load coil that caused the housing to split.  Hey, we've got a spare VHF!

Our old mast, resting on drums.  It definitely needs painting, but we fear that it will seriously delay the re-rigging.

This is the masthead, considerably easier to work on now!  Normally, it's 75-feet above the deck. Cam cleats for a waterproof cable entry into the mast, the anchor light, and old antenna (pre-replacement) are visible.

The piece of plywood covers the deck hole for the mast.  It's not fancy, but it seemed to work.   

 

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