An early morning e-mail notified me that the bimini had been re-stitched, and that they were working on the little bimini-pole cover that I’d commissioned them to make which should cover the wires and deck connectors to keep them a bit protected from rain and spray; although they are waterproof and all of the electrical connections have been heat-shrunk sealed I prefer to not to give salt water a chance at zapping the solar installation. I waited a bit and headed out to the sail makers at about 10 in the morning but they weren’t quite finished and asked me to come back in a half-hour. So I went to ELECTEC for some relays in order to augment the cooling for the fridge by adding a fan and then had a coffee down at Lagoonie’s. Mark dropped by, he’d been to my boat and seen that the dinghy was gone and knew where I’d most likely be, so we chatted for a while and the 30 minute wait extended to over an hour, but when I went up to the loft they had finished. There was a bit of discussion about the re-work, since the person doing the work was adamant that she’d done exactly what I’d asked, but I had had a witness and had also taken pictures. Unfortunately they had run out of Velcro with sticky-back for the panels (although they’d put on the bill) so I ended up having to source that myself rather than wait for them to order it. The two local chandleries wanted about $13 per foot; but I went to ACE Hardware and managed to get it for about $1/foot. That shows how big the markup can be for “yacht” items!
Back aboard I proceeded to get the bimini up and attach the panels. The new stitching was spot-on and by 17:00 I had the panels attached and the wiring temporarily completed, I’ll do the final work tomorrow. I’ve also got the O-ring and repair kit for the head – but I’m not in the mood to do that now. I did head in to the SMYC to say hello to the crowd and then to Barnacle’s for some Saganaki plus listening to Mason doing one set with his solo show.
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