More new toys equals more projects

When we were down at the boat weekend before last we had a few new goodies along with a list of projects set out to do. First order of business was for Dirk to climb to the top of the mast to install the new wind instrument. The old one removed would tell us direction but not speed as that portion was not working. So off with the old, on with the new. Afterwards I lowered Dirk down to the level of the radar to begin that project. Tools hoisted up, and after quite some time and a few choice words being overheard across the marina I'm sure, the radar and mount was lowered. I lowered Dirk for a rest of being up the mast about three hours and find out the radar mount is too small for the new radar. Aaaarrrggghh, why cant something be easy? So Dirk gets on the phone and finds a welding shop that can weld a bigger plate to the existing mount and they can do it while we wait. Yeah! So spending much of the next morning running to the welding shop, waiting, road trip back to the marina because we forgot something, return to the shop, we get it done. Of course we had to get our mandatory fix at West Marine on the way back to the boat only to find we aren't going to have enough cable to run it. Aaaarrggghhh again. So Dirk decided the Radar project just wasn't happening that weekend. So he decided he would install the new Tri metric meter we got in last week.
Im sure we will find it comes in handy once we start cruising and living away from the marina and the access to shore power. We played with it a bit this weekend and its pretty neat as it shows you the impact of every item on the battery. So we are becoming conscious of what our power loads and demands are. Time to switch some lights over to LED and get that wind generator we have been talking about. While Dirk busied himself with other projects I finally got started stripping and sanding the topside teak. I need to get busy with this as I really cant see myself doing this in the heat of summer. Of course our four day weekend ended much too quickly, and as usual we hated the idea of coming back home. We ordered a cable extension so that crossing fingers, the new radar can be installed this weekend. We also have the new anchor winch coming in tomorrow along with the new navigation pod to hold all the new instruments. After Dirk spent so much time up the mast and us trying to communicate we decided to finally order those "marriage savers" headsets I keep reading about. Got them in today and we will play with them this weekend when Dirk is dangling in the air.

Looking forward to using them when we start sailing again. Especially when I'm retrieving the anchor and doing the so called "anchor dance" that I have heard it so affectionately called. Will keep you posted on how well they work.