All crew will become familiar with safety and the Puds is no exception.



Nancy has thoughtfully found a great little harness-handle contraption that will make it possible for one person to hoist Puddles aboard should she go overboard. Puds is a lab right and twice has jumped or fallen off the marina dock and almost impossible to get her up and out of the water by oneself.



Also on the fashion scene lately is Puddles wearing her posh new floater coat...also with a handle to help us help her. Puds isn't fond of the jacket, seems to restrict her movement a bit. She will wear it and look happy for the camera for a measly few cheerio's though...

Lot of tough problems were finally fixed on the 18HD radar, all week I've been trying to figure out exactly what I did wrong when I spliced the cat 5 data cable to the scanner. I replaced two sets of perfectly good RJ 45 connectors only to discover, after buying a $50 new cable, that the problem was the feedthrough connector at the mast splice was actually a crossover, problem solved with yet a third new set of rj 45"s. Learned a lot about making RJ-45 connectors and cables. We now have fully functioning radar, another must have off the list!




Also completed was some leakproofing, here we stretched on a new mast boot that will need to be redone when its warmer as the bottom flare didn't seal as good as I wanted. We put white butyl around the top of the boot to keep water out.



Nasty problem with the leaking starboard cabin port was finally rectified with complete replacement of the gasket which became top priority along with the mast boot as high winds and heavy rains are forecast.



Nancy has got the jacklines installed but thinks there is some tweaking to be done as they stretched when it rained today...



What does a boat unit look and feel like?


Garmin Gyroscope and course computer of course...thats a cool grand in my hand..

Whats worst than the sound of a splash when you drop a tool?
The sickening crack you hear when your thousand dollar, super sensitive gyro pops out of its retainer and falls to the floor. I thought we were doomed, trip ending doomed...no autopilot, no starting the trip until we got this disaster straightened out. We discovered quickly that its not a stocked item and it would take a special order from the US to get it here quick. Lot more to this story that gets off track so lets jump ahead a day to where we have a working gyro again...want to see inside the one I took apart?



Lastly, what would a day on KARMA be without lifting the floorboards again?



This last floorboard ordeal was to run the power cable for the auto bilge pump, run a new heavy gauge boat ground cable to service the aft section in prep for the slew of power connections terminating there.

Work continues on the autopilot install, I've measured and had built, a tiller arm that will allow connection of the drive to the rudder shaft. This particular task has been a challenge fraught with problems that took far more time to figure out than we had time for but we refuse to cross the Gulf of Maine until we have Otto working for us.

And now we watch the weather, the next system that comes through as a calm sea or a Nor' east breeze will be our time. Gut feeling.