New Sail being installed this week

Wow, here it is mid-June already. It seems like we haven't accomplished a whole lot this month on the boat, yet by the end of the month a few big projects will be completed and removed from the list. Of course as you remove one item you add three more. Last month Dirk started the project of installing the new windless. He built a shelf and brackets under the vee berth for the battery that will power it to be installed on. He has installed the circuit breaker and now only has to run a few more wires and install the battery. Last week West Marine had a good sale on their Deep Cycle Batteries so we decided to purchase all new ones for the boat. Our existing ones are about 6 years old and need replacing anyway. We could do it in a year or do it now while they were on sale. Right now we have two house batteries, and one start battery. When finished we will have one start, three house, and one to run the windless. We have also been shopping around for a wind generator and mounting pole. It wont be quiet enough power to run a small city on, but it should be enough for our needs without having to charge up the batteries with the gas generator or starting the engine too often. A few things that I wanted done for comfort rather then necessity was a new water faucet in the galley and some spice racks. My galley sinks are rather deep yet fairly small across. The faucet only stands about 4 inches above the opening. If you have something such as a pot to fill or something to wash that is too big for the sink you tend to get water everywhere.
So after much looking I found a bar faucet that we installed. Why is it that something that should take 20 minutes to do turns into a days project. First we removed the manuel hand pump leading from the refrigerator as I needed to make room for the new faucet. I think it was for when it was just an ice box. This way as the water melted you pumped it down the drain. Now that it has been changed into a refrigerator we no longer need it. So we had a hole left behind. We took the starboard material, actually I used a cutting board I purchased. Its much cheaper and seems like it is the same stuff, used that to cover the hole up with. Then mounted the faucet on top of that. We will be adding a new foot pump in the future to bring in saltwater to the sink. This way I can have the saltwater to wash my dishes and thus save my fresh water for rinsing. Three hours, two of us, and several burises later, the faucet was installed.
I wanted spice racks added to the little wall space I have in the galley. I told Dirk that I would build them. They seemed simple enough to do. I measured for them and Dirk did the inital cutting. After a lot of trial and error I finally finished them. All fingers still intact to boot. It would have been so much easier to go out and buy a spice rack yet with the odd size wall space I had to work with it wasnt that easy. I could have gone to a marine place and spent 45.00 for teak spice racks that would work, but I'm just not willing to pay that kind of price. So below is the racks I built out of red oak, and varnished to seal them.
Not too bad for my first wood working project. Last, but not least. Dirk and I removed the old lazy bag and sail to make room for the brand new sail and lazy bag system to be installed on the boat this week. Cant wait to see it on the boat next time we go down. Below is what ours looks like now.
The zipper does not work anymore as the material is all torn. So we have to wrap it up with rope to keep it closed. Doesnt work so well and it allows water to get in and cause the sail to grow green stuff. So if all goes well we should be able to try the new sail out over the 4th of July weekend.

Still playing with the video program

Okay, so I'm still playing around with the new video program. I dug up some older video of Dirk and I diving in the Cayman Islands. One of the reasons that we love the water is because we are divers and can do this along with the enjoyment of cruising. I can just picture us going along and just throwing out the anchor to do some underwater exploration. Some people have told us about the deck mounted or floating air compressors. As much as I would love to have one of the "super snorkels" have you seen the price of them? So I guess we will just go along and fill the tanks when ever we can. So anyway, this short video shows us mainly at the Turtle Farm on Grand Cayman. It is right off the Turtle Farm and so all the run off goes right into the ocean here. Its seems to be nutrient rich and thus it attracts much sea life. The last part of the clip is taken off the beach of our hotel. About 25 yards off the beach there is what they call the mini wall in about 45 feet of water. It drops off to about 65 feet. This in turn leads you to the big wall which drops off to 6000 feet. The entire Island is surrounded by this wall. The deepest we dove was about 130 feet. The water is so clear you don't realize just how deep you are. I learned to keep an eye on my dept meter.

Memorial Day Video

Well I said I would post a video as soon as I could figure it all out. Dirk actually bought me a new program so that I can make movies, edit and do some really cool things with. I just started playing with it today and this is what I managed to do. Didnt realize how difficult it was to edit and get rid of all the extra stuff. But I guess I will learn. Lots of info to take in but it should be fun. This is just a small clip of being at anchor at Shell Island doing a walk-through of the boat and a small bit of a sunset. I realize I will get better at this, I cant see that I could actually get any worse.