HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY ! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

A glorious fourth! Hot,humid & lots of wind. A great day for a sail. There was a race at TYC but I have no crew. Then again, I don't race anymore. But I did get out on the course and did most of it and was doing quite well, considering that ABISHAG's sails have all been recut more for cruising than for racing. The wind was out of the west at somewhere between 12 - 15 knots, honking quite nicely.She was moving at about 5.5 knots and topped out at 6.5! Went out toward Vixen Ledge, then to Silver Eel then across to Sarah Ledge and back to the Queen Merry. About 12 miles and a little over 2hours to run. It was a wonderful sail. The stuffing box and the packing gland stay and it appears that that problem is now solved! Thank goodness. Now, what will be the next little problem to show up?

I wet down the port aft deck several times with buckets of water and have narrowed down the leaking the aft cabin to that spot. Now all I have to discover whether the Mizzen chainplate, the thru-deck connection for the SSB, or the deck itself is leaking. Once that is discovered, then all I have to do is plug it. Simple! RIGHT!

Yesterday, I pulled all of the chain out of the chain locker and marked it every 25feet so that I can tell how much chain is played out when I anchor. I used colored wire ties to mark the appropriate links. I am going to have to come up with a way to move the chain farther into the center of the boat. Right now, as it is being retrieved, it tends to "pyramid" under hawser pipe and gets stuck there, keeping the rest of the chain from going into the chain locker. It will be a pain retrieving the anchor by myself if I don't come up with some solution.

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

Things are very relaxing right now. I am still learning the idiosyncrasies of ABISHAG, such as turning the wheel very little to get her to tack, rather than really turning the wheel and putting her in irons. Every day will be a sailing day, at least for a couple of hours to try things out, developing routines and strategies. I'll head over to Little Narraganset Bay an practice anchoring this week.