Below decks remains messy, as the yard grapples with recalcitrant electronics and tricky joinery.
Some of the electronics/electrics issues are hard, like getting the GPS to talk to everything else. Some of them are silly, like cabling the deck spot to the steaming light switch and vice versa.
As to the joinery, the yard's chippie has gone on holiday for two weeks. Meaning that Arabella's interior woodwork will remain unfinished. Hmm, the perfect opportunity to wheel in Mr G****** the handyman, my secret, low-cost refit weapon, as threatened in my last posting. Arrangements have been made...
Above: At last! Arabella is back at her marina berth. There is still work to be done, but you have no idea how much better I feel, just knowing that she is getting readier and readier to sail.
Above: Arabella's running rigging on and ready to bend on sails. The new Solara solar panel is now installed and charging. I don't like that messy cabling from the panel to the deck plug, though. I've asked the yard to tidy that up and preferably to use a low profile deck gland like, um, the one I provided to them for that purpose.
Above: Arabella's mainsheet and Harken traveller arrangement, shamelessly copied from an idea of Steve Colclough, the class captain of the Pandora racing fleet at SCYC, Abersoch. I have departed from his concept slightly: I have left the sheet block down at the level of the cockpit sole (not raised via a wire strop) and have angled the traveller control lines and cam cleats aft, to facilitate single handed sailing.
Above: More electrics! To the left is the new galvanic isolator. On the right is the charge regulator for the new solar panel.
Above: Arabella's Tohatsu 6HP outboard has been serviced and is back on board, ready to use (seen here with one of the two Simrad TillerPilots being tested).
