We had a great summer but the sailing season is over. Zach and I pulled Verboten yesterday after a nice final sail.
The algae in the lake was really horrible (hence the blue-green algae alert a week or so ago) and the bottom of the boat was really disgusting. The worst I've ever seen it. The VC-17m didn't even seem to slow it down. Yech!
Overall it's been a great season. Deborah came along for a bunch of the beer can races and that was nice. It's a little different than with Zach along, but it's still fun. By the end of the season she was actually comfortable in some pretty strong wind when I had too much sail up. I still haven't been able to break out the gennaker with her though.
Got the boat cleaned up today. Rolled up the sails, got the food & most of the fabric items off, and Power washed the whole thing, scrubbed some of the tougher algae, and gave the deck its first good cleaning since spring. Put together the tarp frame and Deborah helpded me get it on the boat. Probably the last year for this tarp. Can't complain as we've gotten 5 years out of it.
I really needed to wash the decks down a while back but the water was so full of algae/crud that I didn't think it would help. Next year maybe I'll take down some water mid-season to wash it down.
The to do list for next year isn't horribly long but some of it is expensive.
New main halyard = $1 boat buck
Winch service kits (2), rebed & re-seat winches - $2 boat bux
New halyard clutches (2) - $4 boat bux
Also need to figure out what's going on with the wiring for the chart plotter. It shows fluctuating voltage and low voltage at times even though the other two meters look fine. Very strange. Need to check the solar panel/controller voltages too. Thinking I may rewire the entire power side of the electrical anyway. There's really no good reason to run the wire from the v-berth to the old battery box in the stern and then back to the panel. I think a separate run from the charger to the battery and a shorter run from the battery to the panel will be better. Just need to figure out what gauge wire to run and how much it's going to cost.
Long weekend and I'm beat.
