When we got back to Antigua, Lyman Morse had the warranty work finished and everything was in great shape. That cleared the way for Fay and I to start on the long list of maintenance and other things that needed to get done before we departed.
Fay did lots of provisioning, filling both freezers, the refrigerator, the pantry, and the wine locker! Then just when we thought we could hold no more, a local fisherman showed up at our transom with 25lbs of Wahoo fillets. Now we're totally provisioned and have very little motivation to fish for awhile.
I've been working on annual maintenance and remedial maintenance. The engine took a lot of time as what I had thought would be just changing some fuel filters turned into much more. Sometime in the previous couple of engine hours the nut had fallen off the bottom bolt on the starboard alternator, causing it to shred both of it's belts. Then a routine check of the other bolts found all the shaft coupling bolts loose. But eventually we got the belts changed, the bolts tightened, the fuel filters changed, and the engine compartment cleaned up.
The list went on and on with updated software for the plotter, lubrication of everything on deck, completing the installation and interfaces to the new autopilot, setting up our new passarelle, installing a protective boot around the based of the jib furler, picking up some spares, eliminating leaks in the high pressure lines on the watermaker and on and on.
We went out for a couple of test sails with our RollGen spinnaker furler. The first day was discouraging so we went back, read the instructions, made some changes to the furler installation and the furling line arrangement. The second day was much better and after an hour or so just Fay and I were able to set and furl our 1,800sq ft spinnaker. And the new autopilot did a great job of steering off the wind, never wandering. In 12-14 of true wind the spinnaker gave us an additional two knots of boat speed so we're looking forward to using it.
But in the course of the testing, Stan from Antigua Rigging noticed that our main sail luff was loading the lower two cars. Since we don't want a failure on the main sail in mid-Pacific we had the main removed and added both a strap for a cunningham as well as increased the reinforcement around the lower two cars. The list never ends, but once the main is back on the mast we'll be ready to go.
