What's Up Now

A lot has happened since last March.  Our cruise to the Bahamas taught us several things.  The most important is that we love cruising.  The second most important is that I'm a bit of a wimp and actually like to have water as part of my regular bathing routine.  In order to make our water supply last, I washed dishes in salt water with a brief fresh water rinse.  Not such a great thing for seams and welds on metal pans.  Also, we would do an initial bath with salt water with a meager fresh rinse.  In between cleanings were done with moist towelettes.  All of this is adequate for a while but gets old after a few months.  Even with all this austerity, we bypassed several interesting islands in search for more water.  So, the decision was made to change boats.  What the heck, we changed engines, why not the whole boat.  We really have poured our hearts and souls and resources into Sanctuary but something else was needed for more extensive travels in a bit more comfort.
With the decision made, we started the long process of getting her just right for a spring sale.  That included tweaking the new mattresses I had made for the voyage.  I needed to change the fabric design and a few other things to make them prettier.  Probably a waste of time since they always have sheets on them but it mattered to me.  The big projects were finishing the interior varnish and replacing a radar cable that runs from the Navigation area to the unit up the radar and adding more insulation to the refrigerator.

We had about 45 feet of cable to run through stringers and it took us several days.

We taped the old cable to the new one to use as a fish.  The process took some adjusting along the way

After a few attempts at getting the holes through the stringers large enough we made it to the mast base.  With more ingenious tricks and lots of skinned knuckles, we made it up the mast. David spent a long, nerve wracking time up the mast getting it all connected.  Of course, the raydome had to have some repair work done to it.  Nothing in this project was easy.  Finally, all things are hooked up and we fire up the unit and NOTHING.  ARRGG.  Once we calmed down and remembered to actually plug the cable into the unit, it worked well.  We don't do our best thinking when tired and frustrated.