…. there just hasn’t been anything going on.

The weather has been brutal so I’ve been going to bed at 8/9 o clock every night with two hot water bottles and reading for a couple of hours, which is lovely but doesn’t lend itself to much boat stuff. Stuff was further derailed when I managed to roll my damn ankle AGAIN playing football, so that didn’t help. The short hours of daylight make getting motivated a real challenge. It seems to have been a really long winter, as it started raining in October and then was just downhill from there.

Also on the personal injury front I managed to slash my wrist on a saw I’d left upright. Fortunately not deep at all.

I’ve done bits and bobs here and there including more windvane work (almost the whole linkage is done), rigging up the emergency DSC antenna for the SSB, untwisting the backstay line (thanks Phil for point that out) and getting hold of the special cable/software to change the settings of the SSB but nothing really worth posting about until I get more done.

I DID manage to get out for the first sail of the year, in 5 knot winds for an hour or two when the temperature got above freezing for once.

This was short-lived as the next day it was super crappy again!

I’ve been reading Storm Tactics by the Pardeys and looking over my equipment. I have almost everything I need to heave-to under a drogue except a swivel, so will be getting one of those soon. I ordered some 2nd hand snatch blocks off ebay that I’m very excited about as well as some discount heavy foul weather gear (end of season so over 50% off!) and some new anchor rode. I’m going to 350 feet of rode which will replace the existing 200 ft I have (Which will be used as secondary backup rode).

I put an order down on 400AH of lithium cells, and am currently figuring out how to create a system so not to fry them. I think I will homebrew my own BMS system using a HouseBMS board, but more on that at a later date.

Oh, and my new sails arrive this month. I’m so excited, not only will I have sails that are not bedsheets but also I’ll have THREE reef points! A lot better than my current one. Should make sailing in marginal weather a lot less stressful. Also will be loose-footed which will be interesting.

Hopefully going to Orcas next weekend and I intend to try my hand at filming it and making a short film, so we will see how that goes.

WHERE’S THE SPRING AT!

(EDIT: this was originally called ‘I’m not dead’ but apparently I’d already used that title once so I had to called it something else. Sigh. Predicable already after only a few years!)

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