It’s been raining off and on for several days, and the crew have been hunkered down below decks staring at screens and trying to keep busy. We’ve been in Grand Cay for almost nine days – twice as long as we’d planned – due to a few self-inflicted engine problems and some very unfortunate timing.[…]
It’s always the little things that hold you up, and in our case, this week, it was a single data cable – the one sends the signal from the masthead wind sensor to the onboard nav/comm network our instruments draw data from. All the key sensors and transducers plug into this network and speak the[…]
The crew have been working round the clock for the last week to put Avignon back together following her month long stay in the yard. All, and we do mean ALL of our gear and stuff and everything had to come out of the boat for the electrical rewire to happen… about 3/4 went into a[…]
Big fire at the boatyard this morning – a hundred footer up in flames! Avignon is safe on the opposite end and across the road. Too early to know the cause, but propane is often the culprit. It sinks when it leaks and accumulates in the bilge until rogue wire or pump sparks trigger an[…]
We are days from relaunching Avignon out of the yard: she is a functional boat again, with many upgraded systems, a polished hull, and a fresh coat of bottom paint. The “moderate refresh” we originally intended became (as these things do) a rather bigger job, partly because of the unintended electrical re-do, but also the[…]
It’s the day before Easter, and Avignon has been on the hard for almost three weeks. We did not foresee having to do this just a month ago – but things went south with the last electrical guy soon thereafter when we found that he’d needlessly commenced a wholesale rewire of the boat, and was[…]
Have you ever seen a map like this? It is called a Pilot Chart, and is my favorite out of all the paper charts on board: it tells you, for each month of the year, the average prevailing wind direction, wind strength and current for any spot in the ocean, based on 100+ years of[…]
“The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.” – Arthur Ransome
When a 50+ year boating veteran invites you to go sailing in the ocean on a Saturday morning, you accept without hesitation – especially when it is your same model of boat and you are unschooled in its operation! So we got up early, dropped Bridge off at doggy daycare, and boarded the vessel just[…]
Outfitting an oceangoing sailboat is neither easy nor simple, particularly when the boat is old and even more particularly when you live aboard. It so happens that underneath the very bed we sleep in sit most of the cords that power our 120V electrical outlets (household outlets), pressurized hot and cold water lines, navigation cables,[…]