I took down the dodger this morning and brought it into the sail loft, along with one solar panel so that they could sew the Velcro tabbing to it. The boat is quite a lot hotter now, as the sun doesn’t get blocked by the dodger canvas and can shine straight into the cabin. The nights are going to be bad as well, since I will need to close the main hatch completely to prevent any rain coming in. But it will only be one or two days before I have a permanent solar installation on the dodger. Depending upon how that works I’ll do the same for the bimini.
I had to get a couple of small parts at Budget Marine this morning, then picked up the PWM unit for my watermaker, which had arrived at ELECTEC. If all goes well I’ll be able to make it to St. Barths and the “Bucket” race this weekend.
I spent an hour pulling cables through, only to find that one of the cables is 3-4 feet too short! I’ll extend it, but need to get the butt-connectors at the hardware store, which means another trip to a store on the dinghy. Note to self – Check dinghy fuel.
Once I had my new wire extension in place with a butt connector I had to make up the waterproof connections, I had purchased the last 2 units that had 4-poles each from Budget Marine. The first one took a while, since the connector was not made for the large diameter wires that I was using, but in the end I had it firmly attached to the deck with wiring intact and what I am fairly confident is a watertight seal. Unfortunately the second connector had a stripped screw inside, one used to hold a wire in place. Normally I would have returned it to the store, but since I knew that they had no more of those items I spent more time trying to jury-rig the connection and managed to finish shortly before dark. I managed a quick shower and still caught the tail end of Happy Hour ashore. After a couple of frothy beverages with Mark and others I returned to a makeshift dinner aboard.
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