Suppose to rain this Thursday.  All day.  No big deal.  After all this is Seattle.  Iversons are suppose to come out and measure our dodger.  They won't pattern in the rain.  I'd like to get it on Appa before Father's day but that is not going to happen I guess.  Oh well.
Evidently I 've been wrong about our planned departure time to Mexico.  It is 2013 not 2014.  Why I didn't get that, I'll never know.  Was talking with Jen and said something along the lines of "Well we have 2 years to get the boat ready."  This was met with silence.  "What?"  "We are leaving next summer!"  "Huh?"
Hopefully all that crap from Japan is gone by then.  They recently found a whole huge dock drifted onto the Oregon coast.  It is huge!    Imagine running into that at night.  <shudder>
Anyway, took off the hatch that covers the sliding companion way slide.  Water squishing out of it when stepped on.  Just like the anchor locker hatch, all screws hold teak down are gone and nothing to stop water from getting in!  Grrr.  WTF?  Why would you do that?

That is water coming out.

Beautiful wet core!

I spilled about twice this.  LOADED with water.  Really crazy.

So right now I am rebuild yet another part of this boat.  Just what I want to do.  The teak on this thing is worn out also.  Better than the anchor hatch though.  I'll make it better.  Thankfully I bought all that extra stuff for build the anchor hatch.  Saving money right there.
Jen is flying out with our daughter to Florida to see some relatives.  I'll get a couple hours each day to knock things off the list.  That list has grown HUGE and now I have half the time to do it in.

Well, we did the race.  7th out of 9 in our class and in our division 14th out of 31 boats.  Got killed in the light air start.  The wind eventually built to 35 knots or so and then died down to 10-15 knots out of the west for the rest of the night.  Had a great spinnaker run home and were at the Inspection Dock at 0900.   The whole trip went off without too much trouble.  The engine ran great except for that blasted alarm and fuel tank gauge problem.  Have to figure that stuff out.
Now....PICTURES!

Great delivery.  Left at 0630 and arrived in Vicoria at 1500 or so.  Never saw under 8 knots SOG!

Bison burger!

Sticky Wicket having the cocktails!

Table out and covers of the cushions are on

Rich B.

Steak dinner on Friday night

Mid Strait and the wind is building. 

Eventually the wind built to around 35 knots

Drying stuff out

Maxey.  

More Maxey.  Delivery home

Spectra wreath

Learning line handling and knot tying from one of the best, David W.

Almost home

 If you would like to sleep in a coffin, it would be all right. -True Grit

This is Pete trying out the lower bunk in the bunk room.  He fits!  All 6'5" of him.  Even he was amazed.
Well, we are all ready for Swiftsure.  Had the prop adjusted.  Turns out in pretty typical fashion, the prop was installed wrong.  The blades weren't seated properly and the blades were out of order.  The bolts holding the prop together were bent and the thing was completely out of grease.

So the pitch was at 22°.  We reduced that to 18°.  I can now hit 2900 RPM.  Not sure if that is going to effect my top speed or not.  We'll see Thursday morning on our way to Swiftsure.
We decided that the alternator problem is not worth worrying about.  To be sure the wiring is suspect but we think that the 16.5 volts that we see is the regulator being programmed to overcome the resistance of the battery isolator.  I called AmpTech and they said that the alternator can run up to 300°.  I think all systems are GO!  I hope.

This winch has been giving us fits.  The cog was in backward.  Had to drop the ceiling in the head again to correct.  All fixed now.

Pete made these new spin guy blocks.  Pretty cool, I think.
I chased the heater duct down and changed out the registers to something that can close.  We now have some heat in the forward two cabins.

All done but the packing and stowing of food and such.  More later

This is the hatch in the aft head with the ceiling down.  That is wet wood right there.  But no rot.  Haven't had time to investigate it properly but it might be teak.  I saw that wet area and thought "Ah hell, here we go."  Stabbed it with my knife and it is solid.  It is leaking and has to be fixed and it might be leaking into a cored balsa area so I really need to investigate but at least this area is OK.  After Swiftsure, I take the hatch off and see what I see.

Here is the man, David.  He has probably logged more hours on boat projects than anybody else.  The winches are almost done.  Here he is tearing down the aft head's ceiling to gain access to the bottom of the winch.  Certain Harken winch models make you take the entire thing off to lube it.  What a pain.  Rachelle helped put everything back together while I stood around and wondered what the hell I've gotten myself into.  

I love the boat but she needs some work to get her up to speed.  I've been working so hard on the hatch, heater bullshit, etc. that I really haven't had time to figure out the systems on this thing.  

Underneath the lower bunk in the kid's cabin there is a nice area for storage.  It could be better if the PO had ran the waterlines a little more logically.  Some in moving the lines around in an attempt to get a box in that space, I noticed an airleak in the line that draws water off the tank.  Tightened that and then decided to hit them all.  Feeling good about that, I went under the galley sink to tighten those hose clamps and found a couple things.  The water pump is being held by two screws.  The insulation on the freezer sucks.  They squirted that foam in a can all over the place.  WTF?  This area also holds the valves for all 3 water tanks.  This means that there are a bunch of hoses under there.  Looks like a snake's wedding.  Maybe 100 hose clamps in that area alone.  Ugh.  That and some of the connections are iffy.  The PO has various sizes of hoses in the same run.  Why?  Pretty minor stuff but still.  

Engine.  Chris is still trying to figure out the reason behind the dimly glowing idiot light.  We spent couple hours going over the connections and found some loose ones.  He thinks, and I agree, that the external regulator needs a cleaner power source.  So much of our time was spent looking for a 12 volt power source that worked when the ignition key was on.  I had to go home and sleep and left him to venture forth into the Lucas hell that is my engine room.  

 Here is Rachelle unloading stuff from the boat to make room for other stuff.  Big Costco run Sunday.  Sure am glad that I have friends like this.

Stuff is everywhere.

Eventually I am going to have to say the boat is good enough and let it go.  I have one more project that I will do on Tuesday.  Then clean this crap up and be done with it.  I am going to be gone for 5 days and I haven't really be connecting with my wife or my kids.

I should have followed my gut instinct and done more to the engine when we took delivery of her back in April.  In getting ready for Swiftsure, David found this-

The one on the right is the new one.  Duh, right?  We motored from White Rock, BC to Seattle with the impeller looking like this.  The engine temp never climbed above normal even when heading into 5 foot waves for hours bashing home down the Sound.  Now I have impeller parts in the heat exchanger.  Grrr.

On the plus side, the winches are nearing completion.  Thanks to my good friends!!  Next week this time, we'll be in Victoria getting ready to race!!

Boat bling.  What to buy.  I need new furler blocks.  Schaeffer or Harken?  Ronstand?  My problem is that the stanchions can be almost permanently welding via corrosion to the bases.  When repairing the toerail I had to destroy three of them to get the stanchion out.  I like the look of the furler block that goes around the stanchion but I'm afraid of the complicated install.  They are more money also.
Emailed with the old owner and found out that when the batteries are fully charged, the electric idiot light on the panel will be dimly on.  Our problem exactly.  Carden went through the manual for the external regulator and found that the wire to power the regulator is going through a light bulb on the panel and then to the regulator.  That would explain why he was seeing 14.5 volts at the alternator and only 8.9 volts at the power line for the regulator.  That wiring is a mess.  Just all jumbled together.  Gotta fix that.