Why ME

When we were out sailing in that gale last week, the wind blew of our windex so it had to be replaced. You have to pay a rigger a minimum of $75.00 to go up your mast so I bit the bullet and let Barry and John & Gail Borkovik haul me up. It wasn't too bad, the boat did not move around like the Annoe used to when someone stepped on and off of it. Our mast also has three steps at the top which I stood on when at the top. I had Barry haul me right up to the top so the harness I had on basically was holding me up and I could work with two hands to put on the windex. (I wear a climbing harness with the main line attached and then a sailing harness around my mid section with the safely line on.) Barry had hauled up a bag of tools on our spinnaker halyard so I just had to root around in it to find what I wanted. There was a great view from the top. It is nice to know that I am able to work up there, I am sure it will be a different story when we are at sea and there are just the two of us aboard, that means I will not have a safety line as well as the main line. I wasn't even shaking too badly when I got down. If you have any questions, we'd love to hear from you.

More upgrades

We got our new liferaft the other day and have put it on the boat. It is a 4 man liferaft that does not include water and food supplies. If we wanted those supplies it would have had to come in a bigger container and as you can see by the picture it just fits nicely under the boom in it's present condition and if it was larger we would have to put it elsewhere. We now need to generate an abandon ship list and post it on the boat. Notice the reddish line that is attached to the boat, this is what will stop the liferaft from getting away once it is inflated. All the big black straps that secure it to the boat are quite easy to undo so we should be able

to deploy it quite easily.

The next picture shows you our external WiFi antenna. This is hooked up to our computer when we are in port or up to a kilometer away from port and it boosts our computer's internal wireless hook up so that we have better reception. It works very well and apparently will be very useful down the west coast. The antenna is mounted on our radar arch at the back of the boat, you can also see the two new solar panels that we mounted as well as the ham radio antenna sticking out. We may have an issue with the man overboard pole rubbing on the solar panels at the back, so we will have to keep an eye on that.