It has been tough to find a weekend I could spend on the boat - always some event getting in the way. So this past weekend was my time - weather be damned. And damned it was - I was swapping out my anchor and chain on the dock in a snow storm, wearing my foul weather jacket for a different kind of rain - the snowy kind. Now that my Bahama trip is over, I am updating my anchor setup: 75' feet of G4 chain instead of 60 feet of BBB; 33 pound Rocna anchor instead of a 44 pound Delta. The Rocna is the latest generation anchor (like a Mantus) and sets more quickly and holds better. The manual says to be careful drifting backward too fast when you drop the anchor, lest you damage some equipment on your boat when the anchor quickly sets and stops you abruptly. My brother found that out when he bent a heavy duty aluminum flange on his catamaran. I pull up the anchor and chain manually, so having a lighter chain and anchor matters. The 44 pound anchor was on the edge of what I can manhandle. Losing 11 pounds makes a big difference. I still intend to cruise and anchor in the Great Lakes. Rocna claims that size anchor will hold my boat in a 50 knot gale with accompanying surge in an anchorage with poor holding. We shall see.

My other update on the boat was to replace my middle solar panel with a shorter one that fits much better in that space. So now the boom is no longer in danger of hitting the solar panels, and I only gave away 45 watts of solar power, which I can afford to do - I think. Another improvement - after the fact.

Plus my new MPPT Victron solar controller is way better than what I had in the Bahamas. It comes with an app, so I can see all the data about the state of the panels and what is being delivered to the batteries. The data history is awesome. I can see how much solar was delivered every day and how much has been delivered over the life of the controller. I can also see the high and low battery voltage for each day, so I know how down the batteries got in the morning before the solar kicked in.

Assuming the weather ever breaks, I'm looking forward to the season. There will be two long solo races (Chicago-Mac and Hook Race), and one shorter solo race. Plus a few weeks cruising.