And I do mean hard work! We departed our pension and unpacked here so by noon, we had already done a lot.

Yesterday was the first full day aboard and our tasks were primarily up on the mast. Preparing for a trip up the mast is complex because of the obvious danger involved. Conni normally does all of that work since I must physically climb but I can use a winch to raise her upward.

She sits in a "bosun's chair", a comfortably-padded chair designed for the work with lots of huge pockets for tools and gear and a solid safety system built in. She had to replace our old-fashioned "Windex": a horizontally-rotating arrow that provides wind direction only. That job requires that she place a nut on a bolt that was upside down, daring anything to drop. She also placed our new B&G wind sensor, but there are no wires and it's just a snap-on. She examines, adjusts, and tightens every bolt and nut on the way up, and uses 3M 303, a spray for protecting plastics from UV, on everything. She accomplished every task. Her last task was most difficult: the messenger line for our main halyard had broken and she had to drop a weighted line down the mast though a tiny hole at the top, and I had to find it, grab it, and guide it through a tiny hole about head-high from deck. It required several tries, as you can imagine, but we finally accomplished it.

We decided that if she had the time and wasn't overheated that she'd try to install our new LED-powered light: the upper fixture provides a "steaming light" while motoring, and the lower fixture illuminates the foredeck for night work. In our continuing efforts to lower our energy use, we're trying to replace all of our light sources with LEDs. After an hour of frustrating work, she called it and came down and it was my turn.

I don't do much ascending by rope anymore, although I certainly have done a lot while I was climbing. Nevertheless, I got my gear set and ascended to just below the second spreader, about 3/4 of the way up the mast. Not bad! After a half hour of work, clever Conni realized that she could just lower me using the jib halyard. It was SO easy and fast compared to descending in the usual way.

Not bad for 72, but totally exhausting! We completed a few more tasks and called it a day.

We geared up for our showers, climbed down the ladder into darkness, walked to the shower house and had cold water showers. It's great to be clean. but boy is that water brisk!

We had our first cocktail hour aboard and Conni prepared a Wings Sundowner: Tamurei rum, Schwepps Lemon Seltzer, and a squeeze of lime: delicious! We also opened our gifts from dear friend: clever cocktail napkins and little umbrella and pink flamingos for our cocktail hours. Thank you, Sara.

We ate dinner and both of us dropped to sleep.