Boat Projects can be a little frustrating

Work on the boat is continuing at a constant pace.  Tamera and I find little time (read none) to smell the roses. 

Finished the electrical installations of the Wind turbine generators but did not have sufficient wind to see how it would charge before having to hall the boat out for a bottom job.  Good bye $2000. 
Once hauled out the bottom looked in pretty good shape.   I will need to find out why the boat does not seem to be as fast as it use to be. 

Finished the installation on the AIS (automatic Identification System).  GPS functioned well and we began picking up targets and the alarm sounded for eminent collision.  Having the boat tied up within 1/2 mile of the Houston Ship Channel make the poor AIS freak out.  The closest point of approach (CPA) is set at 6 nm (good setting for offshore but not for ship channel navigation).  All that is great except the unit kept indicating an antenna fault.  I checked for shorts and found none but I will need to check for bad solder joints.  It was very windy when I soldered the connector onto the antenna cable.  It is my suspicion the fault will be there.
I have been testing the SSB radio and I am pleased with the receiving performance however I have not tested the transmit performance.  I have not finish the ground plane installation and it requires working in very tight quarter with a 900 degF soldering iron.  There have been numerous other projects needing attention that this particular exercise could wait for.

The boarding ladder is complete and took a bit more effort than anticipated.  I needed to figure out how to mount it to the boat securely.  The ladder is also what the inflatable dinghy will be lashed to during transit, meaning the ladder mount had to be very secure.  I eventually figure something out and had to head to the house to fabricate it.  The mount will be secured to the coach roof with threaded inserts that had to be ordered and the ladder will need some rubber bumpers which also needed ordering.  All these things on order meant the ladder mount project could not be finished.

Work on the dinghy cover continues with its 3rd fitting on the boat.  Sorry we don't have any pictures of it.  The idea of keeping photographic logs of the effort does not always take front and center when everything and I mean everything is taking longer to accomplish and costing more than expected. 

We took the outboard motor for the dinghy down to the boat and also the outboard motor lift.  The lift needed modification and the mounting plate on the boat did not accommodate the bottom swivel for the column.  More on this in later post but suffice to say that that project is still not complete.

While we have accomplished a large number of projects we still have many more to do.  It will only be more difficult to do them underway and it will get more expensive the farther east we get.  I am starting to have doubts about our sail away date of Dec 1.  If I am realistic it could be another 3 weeks and that by coincidence is also the shorted day light of the year.  In other words we will be sailing mostly in the dark and cold.  Everybody knows that cruising is all about sailing in the cold with little sun light. Ha Ha Ha.

Pardon us but we are starting to feel the pressure.