Working from home? Virtual desk? We’ve realized it also means working on your boat at your house but your boat’s in LA. The final pre-Mexico punch list includes time on the sewing machine. Recall last month leaving the Golden Gate, the Pacific ripped away our Lifesling bag. Too stubborn to spend $100 for another bag that will just degrade in the sun, we watched the Sailrite how-to video. Came out pretty good. 
At least making it custom allowed for a better attachment technique. It will now be secured over a stern lifeline.
The forward V-berth has a nice foam mattress but it’s been a total pain to try making it up with normal bedsheets. Step one is a set of proper cushion covers. The co-owner had earmarked a roll of upholstery fabric for giveaway. It was the perfect amount!
The pile of stuff to take to Ravenswing grows. Doing our darndest to cancel anything truly unnecessary. But things like the water filter, dinghy lock, smoke detector, new solar panels and the Iridium satellite comms fixed antenna gotta come along. 
The prior post left you wondering how the upgraded solar panel mounting would turn out. That went well, although it did take a couple more days. Here’s that “trough” of glass/carbon cloth put to use:
That’s 24 little feet, 6 per panel. It all seems quite secure now. 
That work session also included marking the entire 340′ anchor rode in 20′ increments with bright yellow spray paint, and setting up the anchor bridle semi-permanently for easy, frequent deployment. Quite happy with all that now.
The cut, fair, paint job to remove the old steering bracket got finished. Looks like it was never there. 
The cockpit sole got a sanding and repaint. That was really bugging me. Happy now. 
Also finally painted the emergency escape hatch, and added more neoprene rubber to stop the little bit of super-annoying leak. 
Also in that photo note the solar shower heating up. Thank you Drew for the tip on a better, bigger one. Hung from the boom and with an extended supply line, this provides an excellent hot water flow thru the ventilation hatch overhead of our shower stall. I actually had to wait until the evening to use it because it got warm. Around 105F, like almost too hot to bear hot tub. This will do just fine until the boat goes to cold weather places.
An earlier sewing job had been a cover for the Bimini. That fit fine and looks much better than the beach towel we used on the Cal coast sail. 
Here’s one for Dan, who valiantly tried to reboard the boat from the water in Catalina. That’s when we realized a proper ladder was urgent. 
That came out less than a pound, and it’s not going to rust / corrode.
And we finally got to hoisting the tiny (storm) jib. Although it was only with zip ties as hanks, I think this thing could work well above 30kts, so we’ll make up the needed 8 soft shackles and keep it aboard. 
Keith, I’m rigging up a 4′ long pennant, putting the tack of this thing a foot above the bagged primary jib. But looking again at these photos, maybe it needs to come lower for the right sheeting angle? Hmmm. Overall, it’s about half the size of the primary jib’s reefed deployment. So I’m thinking it’s for steering during basically bare-poles kind of days.
RickH, thank you again for the generous repurposing of your folding bicycle. It is VERY happy in its new place. 
It’s very light, yet rides close to a real bike. Fantastic for getting around San Pedro during the week spent working down there. I think it’ll be great to have in Mexico. We’ll do our best to fight off rust!
Right now we’re many hours in to setting up the Iridium Go satellite communicator. This stuff is expensive and confusing, but once it’s working we’ll have telephone, texting and basic email service anywhere. We’ve purchased through PredictWind so that weather forecasts will come to the boat wherever we are. This is a really exciting development. We’ll try hard to have the tracker system running for those who want to follow Ravenswing progress southbound. Stay tuned.
In between work days we hitched up the land yacht and got up the Mendocino coast. What a peaceful place. 
This girl was diggin’ the picking at Ft Bragg’s Glass Beach. 
That’s a little silver lining to everybody throwing their trash in the ocean 50 years ago. Yep, they just dumped it over the cliff for a very long time.
One doesn’t get to wander the aisles, but from the bit I could see it’s every bit as tidy and efficient as their amazing website. Same day Sunday will call was great. And the counter guy was really nice, and intrigued by a first-visit from a long time customer.
That’s a scramble of glass and carbon fabric scraps that I happened to throw in the box for this trip. It was thankfully just enough to form a long strip of angle bracket material. 
Pretty sure tonight no epoxy spilled where it doesn’t belong. The morning will tell.
You guys will probably see a lot more about them in a couple months as we make plans to buddy up in the Sea of Cortez. Along with a tasty dinner they walked me through their Iridium Go satellite comms system with built-in PredictWind forecasting. I think we’ll copy what these guys did! Gotta hurry to get the antenna and base installed later this month.
The bathroom dry rot king can imagine what happened when I finally got the pump’s clog to clear in that Alamitos Bay parking lot bathroom. Nothing a little Clorox couldn’t fix. Note in the photo the small water lines and black ‘vented loop’. That used to be much higher up, behind a false bulkhead. Turns out I had too much elevation gain in the toilet flush-water supply line, meaning we were constantly starving the toilet for sufficient flushing water. Rerouted it all this morning via the “sea chest” concept down at hull bottom level, and it works like a champ now. The Lavac toilets are great with simplicity and strength, but do require sensible setup.
We’ll show you the install soon.
Pretty darn happy yesterday driving down I-5 (basically empty) at 70mph getting 23-24 mpg in a huge ass truck.
I discovered how great the truck’s factory supplied exhaust brake works.
No time for sailing this week but at least this is a nice marina to hang and work in for a few days. Next up will be the designated BajaHaHa anchorage in San Diego later this month!
After rounding the corner we did a little wing&wing with main and jib. Gotta love doing 8-9kts with zero effort on a cruising boat. We started checking out coves for a two night anchorage. 
The shore-boat boss at Two Harbors had suggested Big Geiger cove. Found it, but saw it was a private beach of the Blue Water Cruising Club. 
We set the bow anchor anyway, figuring we could dinghy ashore elsewhere. Then rowed over to the nice Grand Banks trawler to ask where they’d recommend a stern anchor. Turns out those folks are basically the summer ambassadors for BWCC, and they invited us ashore. After we hoisted the guest burgee. 
They say the place looks the same as when the founders put it together in the 50’s.
With Ravenswing safely docked, we grabbed a rental car and scooted back to real life in the Bay Area and Oregon.
That shot looks peaceful but hours before a local sailing school boat was screwing around in the fairway behind us, pretty much failing at sailing. I was on the dock washing laundry when the driver starts yelling, “we’re adrift!” as their stern is coming for Ravenswing. After they failed at rope toss, and a narrow miss, the school’s fleet manager jumped aboard and asked us to shove him back off. He’s got this. Sails were up but engine dead. So I turned back to the wash. Three minutes later the same boat is headed at speed right at our vulnerable pointy float hull stern. Wings’ Bill had just brought over a cold beer, and thank heavens he was there to take the first blow from that Benetau. Inches away from a trip-stopping haul out! The fleet manager later apologized that he should have sailed on the jib instead of trying to trim their saggy main (yeah, no shit dude. Your people are on a sailboat and need to pull some rope instead of freaking out re: the engine). No harm done and an opportunity to realize it’s time to lighten up :)
Amy and Dave and their girls on F27 WingIt and Bill & Tammy on Wings almost caught us as they could see WaterWings v. Ravenswing ahead. 
Of course Catalina then served up big wind gusts a half hour later as we were setting anchors. After the breeze died, Amy paddled over to visit. 
To thank Ravenswing for dinghy ferryboat work, the WingIt crew left the rainbow unicorn in our permanent care. Jimbo wonders what the hell we’re going to do with it. Seems great for the San Diego HaHa kickoff?
Our mascot seems to have enjoyed the first passage. He did great. 
And Honey, as a good omen, you’ll appreciate that this one watched over our ice cream stop at the Two Harbors store. 
By mid Sunday morning all the other Splash boats rolled towards home, and we stayed on with the shallow end of bay beyond the mooring field all to ourselves. Such an advantage of the retractable-foils tri! We’ve parked a 40′ cruising boat within swimming of the dinghy dock. Similar size boats are a quarter mile out. 
Anton had to depart Sunday, so the three of us are thoroughly enjoying splits of his share!
They put our 27′ beam into a 28′ slip because the big side tie dock was reserved for the 1989-90 Whitbread around the world all-female race boat Maiden. She’s been rehabbed by Tracy Edwards, the one who at 25 years old boldly told the sailing establishment she would rep England in the race with an all female crew. They were heavily mocked, until they won two of the four race legs.
It was a peaceful morning sailing past The City. 
Then, par for my long course, we had to stop in Sausalito because my-built half of Keith’s new water tight escape hatch bolting device wasn’t good enough. Jeanne drove to the boat with stainless steel parts to mate with the Skateaway handle, and we departed the bay three hours later than planned.
One of those spinnakers fits, and PaulM will be happy it’s a huge ass .75 that looks designed for light air pacific southbound days. 
The crew voted that I have to leave the paint at home. Yea there’s a cockpit sole to refresh, the equipment room touch ups and a few exterior modifications that need repaint, but it’s time to go sailing and call the boat BUILT. The rest is maintenance and upgrades. Keith, we finally did a proper job with the escape hatch keeper lines, but I didn’t finish the inside hand nut to match the one you sent. Will do that in LA this month. 
I think it was actually the three year old spark plugs, as my solo test drive Tues morn was smooth. Pulling the lower unit to change water pump impeller worked really well with engine lowered into the dinghy.
10″, 4 blade, 5″ pitch. Very different and hopefully a game changer. But of course, it didn’t fit right. Here’s the old prop, ready to get the washer and prop nut. 
And the new one in same position. Note the brass splines not fully covered up by the prop hub. That’s bad. 
So an overnight package to get the ONE proper spacer available from Suzuki USA today, and hopefully tomorrow we’ll be motoring again.
Charlie, that’s a recut of the aft cabin companionway ladder you and i designed over a Subway sandwich in Santa Rosa five years ago. Time flies.
Yes I know they’re not the required 3″ away from the boat’s number. Live dangerously.
Went in here and ‘gave notice’ to vacate our slip of three years. Gotta leave by Sept 20 or start paying again :)
Thought a field test was in order so we filled a bucket and set it all in the float hull. 
Yea, the boat builder didn’t think about how that big 2,000 gph in a little bucket would behave. Of course it flipped it over and pulled the hose back inside. So while the pump works great, operator error resulted in emptying the gear and drying out for the afternoon. Never a dull moment on Ravenswing.
Home by 11:30pm and my dear co-owner was a peach about running the tapes with a 100′ measure at 8am today. There’s a .75 ounce asym that might be a little too tall. And a nice 1.5oz from a Reynolds 33 cat that’s a bit short but maybe good. On the third sail my tape measure passed 60′ from the clew towards the head when we hit this
what the heck? And what is the “.com” logo? Keep unpacking it and OMG, Stephen has a KiteShip kite sail basically brand new sitting in his garage for years. These things fly from very long sheets above the mast. They made a run at America’s Cup and Sydney/Hobart, etc. But the company is gone now. I’m not going to tackle this beast for Ravenswing, but want to try this out on a large ocean boat. Anybody in? Go search on kiteship and you’ll see what it’s all about. Meanwhile I’ll get ChrisH to help test the two spins on Friday and hopefully one fits!
Farrier F36/F39 Ravenswing - Trimaran Sailing 