So, what have we been doing with our time you might ask?
Well, we did manage to get most of the bright work finished - 5 coats of stain and 3 coats of gloss over a period of 8 straight days. We really lucked out on the weather as this is the only 8 rain-free days we have had in a long while. The day after we finished, the rain started in again and, although it is not very serious rain, it does manage to rain a little every day.
Our second big project for this period of time has been to replace the two dorade boxes on deck with some solar vents. This is not because there is anything wrong with the look of the boxes (very nautical really), but we are trying to recover some deck space on which the dinghy can ride, and the boxes were just getting in the way. If you ever want to experience some anxiety, try removing a perfectly good, waterproof fitting from the deck, revealing four bolt-holes and one 4-inch wide mega-hole right through into the cabin. It took the better part of a day for me get the wood box unstuck without making too much of a mess of the deck itself, and the rest of the day to seal up the holes with epoxy and place the new vent. Of course, I got one done just before the rain started, so now we have one nice new stainless steel vent and one old dorade box, making for a very unnatural balance to the esthetics of the boat. I have now been waiting for almost a week and have not gotten another dry 24 hour period to allow me to complete the 2nd vent - not sure when then will happen now.
In case you are wondering why there are no photos on the post, it is because this is really a test of another long-term ongoing project of mine. I have been working on and off on getting our communications situation sorted out. This post is getting to the blog via our SSB radio and Pactor III Modem and an email service called "sailmail". Basically, I am typing this entry on my laptop in a program called "AirMail". When done, I push the post button and pop up the "Terminal" window, which lets me see all of the latest sun-spot activity and likelihood of talking to a Ham/SSB radio anywhere in the world. Based on my current location (Nanaimo), and other factors that I don't fully understand, it tells me what stations I have the best change of making a connection with (usually in the San Diego area from here). Then, through a bit of trial and error, I attempt to connect via my "sailmail" account on one of the available frequencies. At this point, the Pactor modem takes over and tunes my ICOM 802 radio to the selected frequency, triggering the AT140 automatic antenna tuner to optimize our backstay antenna, and starts to send bursts of digital data. If successful, the receiving radio station will accept the data and forward in on to the internet as an email message to google blogger, which in turn formats it for your viewing pleasure. Pretty straight forward don't you think?
The up side of this type of connection is that I can send and receive emails this way from anywhere in the world, not relying on internet connections or expensive sat-phone charges.
The down side is that it is very slow and will not support anything but text (thus the lack of pictures).
If this works out, I will let everyone know what our email address is on "sailmail" soon.
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