I woke up early and edited my pictures from yesterday while listening to the morning VHF network. After that morning ritual I headed to the fuel dock to get the dinghy tank filled up and met Bruce, from Sold the Farm as he headed there to fill up on diesel and water. We talked for a while and then I went on my long journey through the causeway bridge and to the boat yard to take a look at Mau, since Bernd and Carmen are working and can’t come by themselves. It turns out that the yard manager had just checked the boat, so I didn’t need to go inside and from there I was going to walk to the far end of the runway to the cargo building to pick up my BBQ parts but I got a lift there by car from Andy. The package pickup went quickly since there was no recent delivery and thus no queue, and within minutes I was out on the road again. Rather than walk the mile or so back, I flagged down a bus which took me to where I’d left the dinghy for $1.
Audrey from Leila came by to say hello, they are hauled out at the moment for repairs and are then going to head down island – hopefully I’ll meet up with them again somewhere. The visit came as a welcome break while I was folding the laundry below decks, making work until I can get to a period where the winds die down a bit and I can pattern the decks for the drill holes tomorrow.
The winds settled for a bit so I measured, marked, measured, re-checked and then put 4 drill holes into my nice decks. It was very difficult to hit the pressle on the drill and make those holes in my pristine decks! During the last drilling portion the batteries started fading quickly on the borrowed drill and now I’ve gotten a charger for it from Mark but need to wait a couple of hours to let the batteries get charged again. My decks are balsa cored, so I am making the holes a little larger than necessary and will then put in some epoxy and then insert tubing which will also be epoxied in. The wires will run through the tubing (which I’ll also fill with silicon) to ensure a watertight seal both for the wiring and also for my balsa core.
The holes are now epoxied! I’ve inserted plastic tubes into the holes and epoxied those into place as well and I’m fairly confident that they are going to be watertight and not leak water into my balsa core. I’ve cleaned the deck area where the panels are going to go tomorrow . I trust that the winds will soon die down sufficiently for me to use the real panels to check if I’ve drilled in the correct location. Although if I’ve messed that up I don’t have much choice about panel placement.
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