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My brother Rich and I had a great afternoon sailing in winds that were mostly 15-25 knots. We put a reef in the mainsail right away. We did record a gust to 29 knots. Our GPS speed touched 8.1 knots. It was a fun time.

Winds for the most part were less than 5 knots except for about a 1/2 hour when they made it all the way to 8.5 knots.

The local fly community had a nice buffet on the boat and enjoyed eating our ankles.

Great afternoon sail with my wife.

Great afternoon sail with my wife.

I took a half day of vacation and met up at the marina with my brother, my daughter and her boy friend for the first sail of the season.

Before heading out we stopped at the fuel dock to top off the fuel tank and calibrate the new fuel level system.

Winds were variable to say the least. Before we departed they had dropped to about 4 knots so we got the genoa ready. Once we were out and had put the mainsail up the winds rose to about 15 knots. So, we did a sail change taking down the genoa and put up the work jib. Shortly afterwards the wind dropped again to the 5-6 knot range and once again we did a sail change putting the genoa back up. We sailed with the genoa for the rest of the afternoon.

We all had a great afternoon sailing.

With the lighter winds I decided to try flying my drone off the boat for the first time. It was a bit hair-raising to say the least. Flying on land is not to bad, but off the boat with the wind going one way and me on a moving target (the boat) going another made it a bit more difficult.

Controlling the drone is pretty straight forward. The front of the drone has the camera on it. Push the joystick forward and the drone flies forward, push it to the left and it flies to the left and so on. Once I launched the drone though it took off, being pushed by the wind across the boat, from the starboard side to the port side. I quickly lost orientation and it took a while before I got it properly orientated again. It has red lights on the back end to help you know what its orientation is, but I couldn’t see the color of the light during the bright daylight.

The video from my first drone flight off the boat is quite erratic as I tried to regain orientation.

I did manage to get a couple decent frame grabs from the video though.

“Thanks Dad” was put in the water and we brought her from the boat yard to the marina. This is the earliest we have been able to launch her. Last year we didn’t launch until 27-June and the earliest ever before was 20-May.

Removed old depth transducer, installed new Garmin Intelliducer depth transducer, reinstalled hull ground plate and reinstalled fuel tank.

We installed a TACO rigid vinyl rub rail kit my dad bought in 2010 before giving the boat to my brother and me.

Installation required drilling and counter-sinking a hole every 6 inches along the length of the rub rail and then using the included screws to attached it to the boat.

Each 30 foot length of rub rail is package in a 24″ square “pizza box” and the hardest part of the job is straightening out the tightly coiled rub rail. We had to use a heat gun a lot.

On Saturday 16-April my brother removed all the old bolts that held the old rubrail in place and washed the area that was under the old rubrail. Simple Green, water and a soft scrub brush.

All clean under where the old rubrail was

On Sunday 17-April we filled in all the bolt holes with 3M 5200 and put a bead of the 5200 between the hull and deck joint all around the boat.

Old bolt holes all filled in

We also dry fit the new rub rail to see how it would look. It will look marvelous!

Dry fitting the new rubrail

Looking good

We also installed the new masthead with the new Garmin GWS wind system. The GWS includes wind direction, wind speed, outside temperature and barometric pressure. The new masthead also supports the VHF antenna, a AM/FM antenna, the Windex and anchor light.

Installing the new masthead

In addition to the GWS wind system, our Gamin N2K system also includes a GMI multi-function display, GPSMAP 421 chartplotter and we plan to add a Garmin Intelliducer for depth. We plan to flush mount the GMI and mount the chartplotter on a swing-arm. I had an aluminum swing-arm that came as an accessory with a small flat screen TV that fits the chartplotter perfectly. We mounted the swing arm as well.

Swing-arm for the chartplotter folds up out of the way when not in use.

We found a rats nest of old cables in the mast that caused a problem in dropping the new cables. So, we opened up the holes at the bottom of the mast so we could pull out to old cables. I went up the mast again to drop the new cables.

Rats nest of old cables removed from the bottom of the mast

new cables dropped into the mast.

We also removed the rubrail in preparation for installing a new one. The rubrail looked to be original (49 years old) and was rotted in several areas. Pulling it off was not to hard.

Removing the old rubrail