What a huge relief! Colin and I got to Ravenswing around 4pm yesterday and found her in good shape. Our biggest problem is copious amounts of bird poop. Like, enough to block out two solar panels. Gross!

Early today we dove into the mainsheet base problem. After sanding back paint and drilling small core-sample holes, I’m thrilled to say there is no core damage! I LOVE our western red cedar hulls :)

The first fix is to replace strength in broken unidirectional glass. I’m pointing at the cracks here.

We sanded back the paint inside the aft cabin and laid in two layers of big reinforcement patch (1708 bidirectional glass). These should have been added when I originally installed the mainsheet with this flying Vee system. Oh well, doing glass work in paradise…

We prepped everything for replacement uni on the outside of the hull, and to add little foam core ‘bridges’ made at home to now create a flat plane from the tops of these little towers over to the deck. Tonight we’ll lay down uni carbon to handle the forces that pull from the boom running sideways across the boat.

We also cleaned out the bolt holes and reapplied epoxy to seal the wood fibers where the bolts pass by.

I brought supplies and tools to remove and replace damaged wood core. None of that was needed, and this whole thing is a single day repair, so we can get moving Sunday. Tomorrow we’ll do normal trip-prepare stuff, including restarting the PredictWind tracker for you guys.

The dinghy motor didn’t store well, and needs some work tomorrow. So for now, we have a long paddleboard upwind from the restaurant here, back to the ship. Time to put the phone down and grab a paddle.

So far, so good. Thanks for all your good wishes. We love your energy, good people.