We're still at Puerto Los Gatos and probably will be for a couple
more days. The wind is currently 20 knots in the anchorage, with some
roll. It's more outside and the whitecaps look like about 3 feet short
period. Some Canadians on "Mio Brio", a Catalina 39 ish, blew in
yesterday from the north and blew out again today. The set a reefed jib
in the anchorage and motor sailed out. Heading south is exhilarating in
a Norther. Heading north against the short period seas is Type 2 fun,
and we've done it. We're not in a hurry, so we're staying here.We've got
plenty of food, fuel, water and sun to make more water.

I had the last ripe banana for breakfast yesterday, then Linda turned
the remaining two overripe ones into banana bread for breakfast today.
We still have a hammock full of fruits and veggies, including oranges
for breakfast (Colebrook style) for a week.

The only boat failure we had on the way down from Seattle was when one
of the padeyes that holds the mainsheet fiddle block to the boom failed.
I lashed it to the boom with a handy line, and we've been living with it
since. Inspecting the broken padeye, it looked like a crevice corrosion
failure. Other Valiants have had the same problem, and replaced the
padeyes with lashings. Benny bought some 5/16" Amsteel which has a
working load limit of 2100 lbs. and a breaking strength of 10500 lbs and
brought it down at Christmas. Linda is the bosun on Rover, responsible
for all the fabric and rope. She made 5 short lashing lines with eyes on
both ends. They are sized to wrap exactly twice around the boom, with
the eyes hanging just below the boom. The wrap goes through the existing
padeyes. Dyneema is very slippery, so the padeyes stop motion along the
boom. The shackles for the main sheet blocks go through the eyes of the
lashings. For the prevangs, one eye is fed through the other, and the
shackle for the upper prevang fiddle block is attached to that eye. The
lashings apply force all around the boom, rather than concentrating it
at the padeyes, and the padeyes prevent motion along the boom. Overall,
an elegant solution and stronger than the original, with less
concentration of forces. The lashings are also easily inspectable,
compared to the original stainless parts where corrosion is insidious.
This is an example where a failure of the original has lead to a better
design (we expect). (I'll include a picture when we get high speed
internet).

Besides that project, we've been reading (both), coloring (Linda) and
studying Celestial Navigation (Eric).

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