Month-long Sailing Trip: Mid-month Break

--Blogpost written by Bob

Monday, July 14

We pulled into our marina slip late in the morning, after anchoring out in the West River last night.  We went out for breakfast and then home for nice hot baths--something we've been dreaming about over the last two weeks.  Then it was off to get a replacement iPhone and to get a software application fixed on Maggie's laptop.  We brought all the drinking water jugs home and filled them with tap water.  Maggie was doing laundry as I was taking care of our house plants and getting some special tools together to take back to the boat.

Our slip is actually on a T-head and we love it because we get a breeze like being
on a mooring and all the conveniences of a slip, including water and electricity. 
This is the view from our slip as storm clouds rolled in over the moorings.

Tuesday, July 15

One of the minor repairs I need to make during our mid-month break was upgrade the fastening of my helm seat.  Two of the mounting screws kept falling out during the first half of our trip and the seat would become loose.  The mounting screws were threaded into threaded inserts that were molded into the seat.  I think the threaded inserts are aluminum or some other soft metal--I didn't want to strip out the threads by over tightening them.  I considered using a liquid thread lock but I, then, questioned the bond between the threaded inserts and the molded plastic seat, thinking it would be next to fail. 

I decided to drill 7/8-inch access holes above the mounting bolts and use washers
and nylon-inserted nuts that would clamp the seat to the adaptor plate.  I covered 
up the access holes with nylon plugs to prevent rain water from getting into the seat cavity.

Except for a couple mounting screws repeatedly falling out,
this helm seat design has worked great.

Wednesday, July 16

One of our priorities of the day was making mosquito nets for over our hatches.  The trip into the northern part of the bay will involve more mosquitos since the water is more like fresh water (and this allows more mosquito breeding).

We planned to make each mosquito net a very generously-sized rectangle--we added six inches to each dimension we measured.  We cut out rectangular shapes for each hatch from a very large piece of mosquito netting we purchased.

We purchased split shot weights at a local fishing supply house--these
are intended to hold down the edges of the mosquito nets.

We rolled the edges of the mosquito netting and clamped the split shot
weights every 3 inches around the perimeter of each net.

A split-shot weight attached to the perimeter of the mosquito net. The split-shot
weights were Size 5 and were made by Eagle Claw.  Larger weights would have been better.

The split-shot weights hold the mosquito nets in place and
prevent them from being blown away by the wind.

The other main priority of today was provisioning for the next two weeks.  We will be anchoring out more often than using slips in a marina this half the trip--this means more grilled dinners on board.  We also want to expand on the heating of pre-made quiche for breakfast--this worked very well on the first part of our trip!  

Tomorrow, we leave for the northern part of the bay!

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