February 10, 2013
Boat work and bleeding go hand-in-hand for me. I don’t think I can remember a significant boat project that didn’t result in at least one cut. This one below is from our now-completed, electric sheet winch installation.
Before we left California, we replaced a lot of equipment on Legacy. By a lot, I mean that we basically saved our favorite couch cushion and replaced everything else. We’d hoped to get the boat work done a month or two before our scheduled departure to the South Pacific but we didn’t. We finished the morning we left and as a consequence, our shakedown cruise was the 7000 mile trip to New Zealand. One of the things that didn’t work as expected was our new Furlboom roller-furling main sail. It is just too hard to get up and down by hand. We bought a Winchrite electric winch handle, but it is really pretty weak and can’t handle the loads any better than I can. Now, we have an electric winch, installed and ready to go (that’s where the cheers come in).
It was a bigger task than I thought it would be. The motor that drives this winch is huge. It took up most of the utility combing box. To protect the motor, we sealed the box with a plastic cover. If the sail goes up and down easily with this beast, it will be more than worth the loss of the combing box.
We can’t try it yet because we have no sails. The new sails we bought weren’t quite right either and they are being fixed now.
We have quite a list of tasks ahead of us. We’re replacing our old sail instruments (oh yea, we saved them, along with the cushion) and we’re fixing, tweaking and tuning a bunch of other things. We needed about five things repaired under warranty and most of that is underway now. Here’s what our list looks like.
We’re getting a pretty good jump on the boat work. We plan to leave New Zealand in the beginning of May, depending on the weather. We’d like to have plenty of time for shakedown cruises before we head to the tropics (Fiji). What’s your bet? Do you think we’ll actually have time to do some testing this time?
By the way, we’re planning to add a section of cruising equipment reviews to our web site soon. We’d really like to let anyone interested know what’s worked and what hasn’t. -Rich
