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.
Keith will like this angle, showing how the temporary escape hatch cover is flush with the hull. The real one is back home for final fairing and paint. 
Yeah locals, legendary crew Dan M came out and was immediately put to work. He wonders why it’s called peel-ply, when it doesn’t seem to peel so well…
Pulling the vacuum on both sides of the hatch area at the same time was pretty fun fabrication stuff. This one came out very nicely. Fairing went quickly in the hot weather, and the new work got a first primer coat Sunday eve. 
The stronger gudgeon post looks like it should have always been there.
The gudgeons themselves are nice and burley. Here’s a look with the paint stripped off. 
So now it’s back to as-launched, and part two is forming transverse bracing from the top gudgeon down to the back deck. Lots of playing with foam core today, including some last scraps hot-gluing before bed tonight. 
His Dad Joe is a sailing captain, mom owns a Santa Cruz 50, Aunt & Uncle with Ravenswing; well let’s just say he has some sea miles ahead of him.
One more paint coat and the plumbing reinstall this weekend will put the head back in business.
what you’re looking at (the green circuit boards mounted above the batteries) are charge balancing modules to regulate the pace at which the four “cells” of this battery bank rise in charge voltage. The risk in an LiFePO4 bank is the cells getting out of voltage balance from their neighbors, and potentially ruining sections with out-of-range values. With these little control boards, when one cell reaches 3.6volts (its full charge), the incoming voltage is converted to heat in those blue resistors. That cell is effectively bypassed from further charging while the others catch up. That’s as simple as I can say it, but there’s more going on with the numbers. It’s a crude version of a Battery Management System, and we’re judging it sufficient for our solar-only gentle charging regimen. Coming up soon we’ll install the CellLog that monitors and alarms each of the four cell voltages that get out of range. That will complete our safety installation.
YESSSSSS! As soon as the autopilot install is done, we’ll get out and test/tweak/learn all this gear.
it’s bonded together now, faired and primed. Paint coat tomorrow if this rain departs for points east.
That 9,300 INCLUDES about 500 lbs. of liquids (water, gas and sewer) that were not able to be removed due to weather just before the haul out. Most everything else was aboard – full galley, all sails, boom and rigging, uninstalled wind vane and furnace. So we’re looking at 8,800 + 300 for the new mast + an autopilot, water heat exchanger, solar panels, 100 lb. dingy & motor. So we’re in the 9,500-10,000lb. range “dry” all equipped.
Just a bit after Ravenswing got back to her slip after the boat yard, the elder two hit the road in the travel trailer for five weeks. Spent Christmas in Raleigh (Griffin flew out), and for New Years the boys tried their hands at some anti-aircraft duty on the USS North Carolina. 
Farrier F36/F39 Ravenswing - Trimaran Sailing 