If you check GANNET’s tracking map after midnight UCT, 4:00 p.m. today San Diego time, you should see that the little boat’s stern is toward the dock. I turned her manually this morning, pushing her out of the slip in flat calm with a long line tied to her stern to spin and pull her back in. This is not hard labor. She is, as I have noted, a leaf.
I turned her to take measurements for the gudgeons for the emergency rudder being built by RudderCraft and to polish and wax her transom, which I noticed needed doing when she was out of the water. I didn’t have any polish then, but bought some over the weekend.
The rest of the hull didn’t seem to need polishing, but I started anyway. Lying on the dock was too awkward and I soon stopped. I’ll finish the job from the dinghy in some smooth harbor or when GANNET is next hauled.
Last week was a milestone. With the haul out, antifouling, installing Jordan drogue attachment plates, and ordering the emergency rudder, everything major on my to do/buy list has been done and paid for. There are still minor items. Courtesy flags. More waterproof containers and bags. Installing the gudgeons, which I won’t do until the rudder arrives in May.
The biggest remaining expense will be provisioning, one of my least favorite aspects of sailing oceans, even though I simplify it as much as possible.
But GANNET is ready three months before departure.
———
The Yellowbrick has now been transmitting positions twice daily since February 7. 18 days. Her battery is at 95%. Remarkable. At a discharge rate of 2% a week, the unit truly is set and forget for almost a year. I intend to turn bluetooth on and send a few emails to learn what that does to battery life.
———
Several of you have advised me that the photo of the frozen wave was taken not on the Great Lakes, but in Antarctica. I thank you all. Here is an explanatory link provided by Gregg.
Chicago is having one of its most severe winters ever, but it isn’t quite Antarctica.
Still a remarkable image.
———
Another sunny day here, but that is about to end. Two, count them, two rain storms are forecast. Tomorrow evening and again Friday into Saturday. The latter may be the biggest storm to reach southern California in two or three years, with San Diego receiving between one and two inches/2.5-5 centimeters.
As many of you know California is having a hundred year or five hundred year drought, depending on which report you read, and desperately needs the rain, though not the mud slides that will inevitably accompany it.
Maybe I will be able to locate the exact source of the leak around the forward hatch. Maybe I will even find the leak has been stopped, said he, wistfully.
A weekend storm is forecast for Chicago, too. That will be snow.
I fly back a week from tomorrow.
