Today was the day to remove the sails and take them to the sailmaker with one question. "Will these make it across an ocean?" Our rigger already pointed out some chafing on the jib halyard all the way at the top, we ordered a new Sampson MLX halyard this stuff is amazing, super low stretch thanks to a Dynema core, it has 12,200 lbs capacity. I went with only the necessary length to hold the jib tight when hoisted on the roller furler. We asked them to splice our old halyard material onto the new so the only part that is loaded is the new stuff. I tried to explain this to the shop where I got the line, they were pretty confused as to why we would do that, they said it was not a load-bearing splice. I explained that at $3.60 ft, it made no sense to spend $360 on line with 50+ feet would be coiled up on the mast in the sun for months at a time. The old halyard is fine and acts as a messenger line to pull the jib up, then the new MLX is the actual halyard. We also got a 'new boat owner' discount at Downwind Marine so it was only $2.46/ft. The only thing I want stretching is our dollars. 
The folks at Quantum Sails have our main and jib to get working on them. Pictures below will tell most of the story. George, Theresa and Christy were amazing. Very knowledgable and they started work on our sails as soon as we left. George Szabo is a rock star in the sailing world, 21 national & North American championships plus a world champion in 2009. They made solid recommendations based on our goals, not their favorite racing setup, which speaks to their integrity and willingness to serve the cruising community. 
Stay tuned on the rest of the story. 

Today I got to teach sailing. 4 nervous and excited people decided that they were going to get certified, so they signed up for the ASA 101 course at Harbor Sailboats. I met with them at 9am and went over their goals, concerns and hopes. Since the main idea is to get on the water and sail, we decided to get going early and headed down to the docks. They all said "let's do this!" That was their team theme, a bunch of go-getter's. Julian was from Lebanon originally, he's in IT consulting and got hooked sailing in the Aegean Sea around Greece, he's also a dive master. Mark is a Corpsman in the Navy and getting out soon, his plans are to get a boat and becoming a liveaboard voyager. I recommended a book called "Get Real, Get Gone. How to become a modern day sea-gypsy and sail away forever." Kim was nicknamed the "Rocket Scientist" since she is graduating from SDSU with an Aerospace Engineering in the Spring. Rob was the most experienced who had sailed in the BVI's and Greece. Initially we had very light wind, so I just gave them the rundown on the boat, rules of the road and finding the wind. By about 11am the wind switched on and we were off! The yehaw's were heard and it was pretty fun. By 12:30 when we pulled in for lunch, the gusts were up to about 15 kts. 3 out of 4 people had some helm time and I showed them how to dock the boat. After lunch, I had them rig the boat, I showed them how to reef the main at the dock, since the front office wants students to reef above 13 kts. We sailed out and started back into the drills. It was a sunny, windy day in San Diego on a Saturday, so we had lot's to discuss about traffic and rules of the road. I asked for a volunteer to dock the boat when we came in and Rob stepped up for a perfect landing, nice and smooth, I hopped off with the boat parallel to the dock, he did better than me at lunch. They secured the boat, rinsed it down and put the covers on. Day one down, well done team! Now to go home and study the materials for the test, "I know it's Saturday night, but you signed up for this." 
Day two was a little cloudy and the wind was blowing lightly from the South. This usually portends to a weather change and I pointed out some clouds as an early sign to weather later in the day. It was written test day. So we sat down for review time, some were really nervous so I answered their questions and we went down to a 40' Beneteau to take the test in the comforts of a very expensive yacht. I wanted them to get a picture of what they could operate if they just applied themselves. 100 questions on all kinds of things and they needed to get 80% to pass. 1 hour later, we're all smiles, everyone passed. Some of the nervous guys only missed a few. So let's go sailing! 
The light Southerly winds got us going and we went into America's Cup harbor to sail the circle around and learn all the points of sail. It just so happened another student boat was in there at the same time. The definition of a race is two sailboats within a mile of each other going the same direction. I told my class that we were going to catch them and pass them. They said, "Let's do this!" it took a while before the other instructor realized that we were on their tail attempting to out-pace and out maneuver them. It was like a racetrack in the harbor rounding the marks and catching puffs and shifts. We had pinched a little hard and got a bad shift and lost them. Unfazed, we clawed our way back and passed them. Each of the students took their turn at racing and it was pretty fun. The other boat gave up and sailed out of the harbor. We sailed back for lunch and another student docked the boat. My job was getting easier as they took ownership of the boat and they secured it without my input. Lunch at 1:15 and I ran back to our boat for a jacket as the rain was looking imminent and secured all our hatches so we did not have any water in the boat. 
The students wanted to get back on the water so we cut lunch short. Kim sailed us out and we went back to do figure 8 drills, tacking and jibing sailing all points of sail in preparation for the man overboard drills later in the day. The guys had all taken turns and Kim was on the helm and we had a pretty hard gust, I said, "That felt kinda squally." About 30 seconds later we were hit with a steady wind of about 20 kts, the boat heeled over really far, but did not bury the rail due to fast response by Mark on the mainsheet. Kim was clearly scared, being on the helm, I was giving her directions from the companion way, letting them deal with the situation as they saw best. I could tell they were a bit scared, not knowing what to do, so I slid up and took the helm with Kim, told her to hang on and we'll bear away and get downwind to regroup. We did and things calmed down on the boat, though we were in a pretty strong wind. So I asked them, "what are our options?" Kim said, "let's roll in the jib" so I said, yeah, great idea, Rob and Julian rolled it up about 1/3 and that helped. So I said, "how about reefing the main?" They said, yes. So I showed them how to heave-to which parks you in a safe balanced place, removes the stress on the main and started to reef, I walked them through the process and sailed out of the heave-to position. They were much more relaxed now and it really started to rain along with the wind. Boats all over the bay were struggling to shorten sail, drop them all together and motor. I shared with the class that if someone is scared, you can't just say, "don't worry, this is no big deal!" being scared is not usually rational, so minimizing the way people feel is not helpful. Kim felt the weight of responsibility of everyone on board being hurt if she messed up. Which is a totally healthy way to view things, after all, my boat my responsibility. We got control of the situation and continued our training with man overboard drills. This is where you throw a life ring overboard and yell, "man overboard" and the job of the skipper is to quickly and safely retrieve them. It's a figure 8 and takes about 2 minutes, most people don't get it on the first try. Rob stepped up after I demonstrated it. A couple of tries and he got him! High fives and cheering all around. Next up and so on. One of the scariest things as a skipper is to lose someone overboard, with this skill down pat, the fear turns to confidence and you can have more fun. By the end, all I could see were smiles on wet soggy faces and a couple said, "this was a great day, we did it!" So getting to about 4pm we headed back to do the outboard training and signing their books certifying them as ASA 101 sailors. They can now take out a 22 foot keelboat by themselves from the club. I offered to sail with each of them if they wanted to have me crew. They took me up on it. I really do love sailing and I love to see people finally understand it too. 

Dock Days 24-26 San Diego, CA 10/26 - 10/28/2016
While we have been away from our house in Redding we have been using our internet data through a little jetpack from Verizon. Several of our devices just decided to download some updates automatically and chewed up a number of gigs. That was very perturbing for sure! What that means is that we seek out free internet and Starbucks is our site of choice. We have spent quite a bit of time there in the past 3 days doing our blog and equipment research for the devices we need to make choices about.

It seems we are shopping every day now for something we are working on! Remember I don’t like shopping? Those who love retail therapy would be in heaven around our world right now! We have been going after some of the big things like faucets and a shower. Tim thinks the faucets are the originals or maybe second generation and they are copper hard plumbed right up to the fixtures! There are no flexible hoses from the copper to the faucet. Tim hates this kind of work and suffered greatly as he worked corroded nuts loose without crushing or crimping the copper. He was a master contortionist in the head as he snaked his body over the head and pump to get his hands, but mostly just one hand, into the small cabinet space. All our faucets are separate hot/cold knobs. Our new ones will be one lever, except the shower.

The shower is a new hose and head that uses a special design to accelerate the water so it comes out with more force with less water. It has a button to stop the water flow so we can take those famous sea showers by first getting soaked and then stop the flow. Next comes shampooing and soaping up, then press the button and the water flow starts again for the rinse. The hose is longer and removable from the wall where the previous one would not have reached over Tim’s head and it didn’t lower down far enough to wash just legs and feet. Our new one was a brilliant find! Oxigenics with Power Pause, they have many other products that look really good too. 

The now new faucet in the head is beautiful! It’s just one lever and the faucet is higher so we can wash our hands under it and I can actually get a wash cloth wet under it. It’s a high efficiency faucet and I’m very pleased. I know in time Tim will be glad he took the massive trouble to change out the old one. This one was practice for the galley faucet which we had to special order today and will wait about a week for it to arrive. It is surprisingly difficult to find fixtures around here! Maybe because there are so many options for people to choose from that stores don’t what to hold much of an inventory?

It seems that we are continually refining our lists! We updated our Amazon wish list with the items we still need and will need to purchase before leaving. Living in this boat world makes things more clear as to needs the more time we spend in it. I’m working on creating a rain catcher, there’s more shopping for that to come. Tim is cleaning off weather stripping and replacing the seals on our top hatches. One out of three is done.

Our Peel Away 7 arrived this week and today I finally had a chance to set up two test areas. I will check them in the morning to see what the dew time is on them. One spot is testing the Cetol that is all over all our beautiful teak. Tim also calls it evil. Its manufactured by Sikkens, and it really is a sick product that turns orange and cracks off. The second spot is for the paint that is on our teak window trim. What is Peel Away you ask? You might want to just google it yourself. I used it in the early 2000's in our Victorian house to strip away 12 layers of old paint off the beautiful fir mouldings in quick and clean fashion. It is painted on nice and thick, then a vapor barrier paper is applied to cover it while it goes to work. After 24 hours I came back and using a plastic scraper to lift off the paper and paint all together and voila! I’m truly hoping this works much the same for us here! That means no sanding or scraping, a novel thought right? You can be sure there will be pictures as we do this. We have a lot of wood on and in our boat. This product is a green biodegradable product.

For me, while Tim was working on the new faucet in the head, I was the labeling queen. Tim asked for me to label where things are so when we pull back a cushion, Tim and I will know which compartment to open to find the item. I placed the labels in the respective area of the cover that corresponds to the location of the item in the compartment. I also identified a number of things that I am not going to keep on the boat and they have been removed to the car. Several bags and two pairs of sandals that will not hold up to use in this environment. Now I only have 11 pairs of footwear on the boat! I know you are thinking that is a lot! Here’s my list: slippers, shower shoes, Toms, deck shoes, Keen water/deck shoes, tennis shoes, mary janes, ankle boots, hiking shoes, sandals and my weather boots. Tim has slippers, sandals, deck shoes, water shoes, hiking boots, dress shoes, comfy shoes, and weather boots. That’s 8 pairs for Tim. Sometimes I get irritated that women have so many additional clothing items to work with or have need of. If I had my way, I’d just dress like a guy, but some of the places we will be going to expect that women will wear a dress and not pants. I need pants for the boat living as a dress everyday is not practical.

I have a chore that I am irritated that I have not completed yet: waterproofing the dodger. It has to be dry and we’ve been experiencing heavy dew at night and I have to do it when the wind is not blowing. Maybe tomorrow? I’d like to get this off my list! 

Tim crewed on another boat in the middle of these days. While he was doing that I wrote on the blog and took a long walk between the loads of laundry. I also cleaned up the cabin down below.  The To Do List is shrinking! Yay!

After having raced for most of my sailing career it's funny how you change. Getting our cruising boat, a 17,000 lbs modified full-keel boat, designed to keep you comfortable at sea was a good choice for sure. Then yesterday I went out on a friends all-out racing boat, a customized Schock 35 with very few amenities and carbon fiber everything, sails, tiller and toilet seat. The boat weighs 10,000 lbs total, with more sail area than ours. Pictures below and a couple videos show the difference between the ride on our boat and the same sized racing boat. We're reaching along in almost 16 knots of wind doing 8 knots of boat speed, a full knot faster than ours in the same conditions. The top video is the speed and motion above, then the 2nd video is the experience down below. The noise is quite loud plus getting thrown around down below, I bet Lynette would not sign up for that. I asked her "Aren't you glad I did not convince you to get a racing boat?" 
Just doing the basics on our boat can be difficult when in the ocean, the rocking and rolling is significant. In bigger seas ours does really well, the racing boat down below can be dangerous where you can fall across the cabin and break something. The owner said he came very close to getting hurt yesterday. People were amazed that I could simply go to the head (toilet) yesterday, the one lady that was with us saw no possible way for her to relieve herself under the conditions. Which by the way was a very mild day on the ocean, 3-5 foot swells that were 20-30 seconds apart and 1-2 foot wind waves and the wind blowing from 10-15 kts. The British sailors never get a day this nice. 

Dock Day 23 San Diego, CA 10/24/2016

Tim and I were shopping again today. Cleaning on the boat and taking care of our own needs. We are at a point where we are having trouble deciding on a few big ticket items because of information overload. We need experts who really know their fields. I’m talking about big things like satellite communications, power management and solar.

The weather has been really interesting these past couple of days. We had rain and sprinkles yesterday and we noticed some of the same clouds today. Tim was up and out early enough to capture the red sky this morning. We were at the satphone store talking to the salesman about different devices when the sky opened up in a huge downpour! Tim and I stood there staring at each other searching each other’s face and wondering if we should get back to the boat. We left a top hatch open and both port lights. We know the port lights let the water down, one in the head and the other over our sofa. We decided that heading back at this moment wouldn’t change anything. We finished up at the store and made another stop before arriving back at the boat. The rain was done by the time we left the satphone store.

Oh dear! So many things got wet! The wind must have helped spray the water all over the cabin! We had to dry off stuff, mop up water, and press out water from curtains and cushions. Things are now so damp from humidity that we sometimes can’t tell if it is wet, damp, or cold. We pulled out the special air dryer that moves air with a little heat to help things dry out on the boat.

Lessons learned today: don’t depart the boat with anything open on a day that looks like it might rain. Nothing was damaged. Our bed was dry so no worries there!

Sea Day 17 San Diego Bay, CA 10/25/2016​

We made plans for today to be a long sailing day. We left at about 1115 and returned around 1800 just as the sun was setting. Paul joined us again today. Its fun to take other people out with us that know about sailing so we can put them to work! It makes my job easier.

We left the marina and motored out into the bay. Tim gave me helm as is usual when we are raising the sails. Tim and Paul raised the mainsail and then unfurled the jib. I continued on the helm for nearly two hours. That is a record for me! I sailed the boat where I wanted and how I wanted. Tim and Paul did the crew work trimming the sails. 

We started the day with the mainsail reefed as the winds were already up. The winds increased to the point of needing to reef the jib. The ocean was really choppy today. In all our sea days so far, a grand 17 in all, this was the roughest. The video that Paul took will show you how quickly the boat was up and down, little short waves that were very frequent. 

I took the challenge of preparing lunch and had to ask Tim to level us out a lot in order to be able to function in the galley. It was more difficult to maneuver and pour liquids than in the 8 foot seas we’ve already experienced. It took me much longer to prepare things because every time I moved an item another item in the cupboard would move. When it came to making coffee in the afternoon it was hilarious because all my lidded cups in the cabinet wanted to come tumbling out! I was stuffing them back in just to slide the door closed to keep them inside!

We sailed about 5 miles off shore to avoid the lobster pots of which I can safely estimate in the hundreds around Point Loma. We had to get out in deep enough water which we did not find until we were 5 miles offshore. In the mid-afternoon we turned around to head back south again. With the wind behind us and the choppy seas the ride didn’t feel that great. When the wind is behind you, it’s not in your face and the air can get stagnant. Sometimes I have to face backwards to clear my nostrils and get a fresh breath. 

Paul had been down below for about 10 minutes before returning to one of our cockpit perches, when he received a phone call. As he turned around to take the phone he felt instantly nauseous. His conversations went silent and Tim and I hoped he would feel better standing up and facing forward. Tim told him if he needed to barf, do it on the leeward side of the boat. That’s the downwind side of the boat. Paul was quiet for quite some time and then he said “Which side of the boat did you say to barf on if you had to barf?” The moment had finally arrived, Paul succumbed to the sea sick vomiting moment right after he had stepped to the leeward side of the cockpit. This whole event didn’t phase Tim or me. It is a reality of life. Paul felt embarrassed but then said, "I feel much better!" We told him there was no shame and it's not some sort of macho thing if you don't get seasick, it has to do with how your inner ear develops. He said that the thing that was really hard was worrying about throwing up, it's not as bad as it sounds. He was a pro and did not make a mess at all. So the fear of getting sick was worse than the actual event. There is something to be learned here. 

I got Paul his bottled water and some paper towels and tended to his few needs as unmotheringly as possible. I just wanted him to feel better and not keep on barfing. He did feel better, he just needed to empty out and all was fine. Paul goes down as our first sea-sick passenger and served as a reminder that we need to get items for sea sickness onto the boat. Items such as gatorade, Pedialite, Jello, and Dramamine or the likes need to be present just in case anyone needs them including ourselves. (Now we have them!)
Paul took some nice footage today, you can see that it's a bit rough today. 

Dock Day 20 San Diego, CA 10/22/2016

Rigging inspection, sale day and teaching sailing
(pictures later, we're low on data so we have to go to Starbucks)
Today, Rocco the Rigger came to check out our standing and running rigging. Tim will fill in the details on that. 


Tim: Rocco was pretty cool, our new slip neighbor has known him for years and highly recommended him. A real sailor and has been rigging for 17 years. He pulled himself up on his bosun’s chair. He went from the top to the bottom, lubricated and inspected everything. He came down with a few suggestions. Remember the gooseneck? That was good experience for me to practice on that. He’s going to have a guy build a new one. He's going to double the screws and bring it around the mast more. It’s such an important component, we are doubling the strength for the ocean forces. He’s coming back on Sat to tune the rig and tighten the shrouds a bit and install the gooseneck. He pointed out two blocks on the main sheet that should be replaced, so I did that today. He made some suggestions on my jiffy reefing system that I will implement as well. Rocco seems like a guy I need to follow around for a while, maybe I could be his apprentice. 


First thing this morning we hustled over to a swap meet at the next marina over to pick up some canvas. Our color is not common and may be discontinued. Now we have about 9 yards to make repairs or create new items that match. We did get a great deal on the material. After that we hustled back to meet up with Rocco at 0750. We finished up with Rocco about 0930 and headed into town for a special sale at Downwind Marine to kick off the Baja Ha Ha.

With list in hand we went and spent! We picked up our Spinlock Pro Sensor Offshore PFDs (made in the UK) that include our harness and crotch straps. This was a huge decision because we wanted offshore vests that were inherently buoyant, in other words, there is nothing to pop open or to inflate. There is no service required on inherently buoyant PFDs. This was a practicality decision. After trying some on over this time we have been working towards leaving, I could barely bring my arms together in front of me and it blocked all my view to my waist and below! This style would clearly have precluded me from functioning. We decided to take Kurt and Katie’s advice and purchase the ones they have been using for many years while sailing around the world. 

The Spinlock vests are quite comfortable to wear and there are no metal rings or big metal parts. The second reason we purchased these is that the inherently buoyant PFDs have thick foam all around the torso, also known for helping you keep your body heat when you are in the water. I had a wake up call in Santa Barbara, it was 90% humidity and 96 degrees and my current life jacket is like the inherently buoyant, but not as thick. In the sun, I was so hot I was concerned I might get heat stroke. This is when I decided we would most likely have to do something different. We are planning to be in the tropics so we have to be practical. The second rule is to “keep the people on the boat”, that is the main function of these Spinlock’s, staying on the boat because they are first a harness. But should something happen we have back-up.

Some other items we picked up on our spree: Watch Commander, rigging lubricant, a Harken cam cleat, LED tri-color light, and a new fan for the cabin. We had quite the bill! The Watch Commander is an alarm system to keep you on your toes while on watch every 12 minutes, and if anything happens the alarm gets louder to wake up others to alert them that the person on watch isn’t on watch. The new fan replaced what I have referred to as the evil fan. It was designed without a back and when you try to adjust it if your fingers get anywhere near the spinning blade it’s scary! Tim & I had a sore finger for 2 weeks after the last whack! The evil fan met the trash can tonight. We were recommended to use the Caframo Ultimate 747, good choice. Did I tell you about the LED tri-color light? It goes on the top of the mast and provides the red, green and white light for when we are sailing at night. It also has an anchor light for when we are anchored, that white light has to be on all night. Lastly, it has a strobe for deep yogurt situations. It even came with a bird spike! This one cost $225 on sale! Converting to LED is the big expense on a boat these days but is essential for power management when underway. For example we replaced one light in the cabin from 25 watts to less than 1 watt and more light. We will leave the regular running and steaming lights because when we are under power the battery is charging and so their power requirements are not an issue. 

We completed the shopping spree around 1130 and returned to the boat. Tim ate lunch and left to teach an introductory sailing course at our club that also pays him. The best thing in the world for Tim, teaching sailing and getting paid! Yes! 

Danielle, our daughter, came and picked me up to go thrift store shopping. I wanted to find a pressure cooker if possible and then pick up a few more items for hot days. I’ve been one who believes natural fibers are very good and synthetics are not very good for the body. As we have been doing this sailing thing, I’ve had enough of my 100% cotton tanks and t-shirts! I’m drenched all the time! I’m making the trade for moisture wicking and faster drying clothing items. I’m feeling like an organic hypocrite! Some things just will not work in this marine environment. 

Danielle and I went to 3 stores in nearly 6 hours of time! I returned having spent around $40 for 15 items and no pressure cooker. The next thing to do is collect all the cotton tanks and remove them from the boat. In with the new, out with the old! Space is limited!

Tim made dinner and Danielle joined us for salad and BBQ swordfish. This was a good day.


Dock Day 21 San Diego, CA 10/23/2016

Today, we planned to take friends from Redding that were here in San Diego to Coronado Island for lunch at our favorite burger joint, the Burger Lounge, and the beach. Tom and Leslie came into town and I noticed their arrival on Facebook. We connected and made plans to spend the day with them. We enjoyed catching up while we took a very long walk on the beach. Then we had lunch.

Tom and Leslie wanted to see our boat, so we brought them to the marina. Leslie had such a fun reaction upon entering the companionway. It doesn’t take long to give someone a tour. After hanging out for a while we returned Tom and Leslie to their hotel so they could catch their flight home.

Once back to the boat we launched into our projects. Tim wanted to get the Whale Macerator Pump in and the old stuff out. It was really really gross! Sewage slime from someone else. Tim’s nose hairs were on fire! And the stench was unreal! Tim was so careful to not spill any of the juices that ran from the plumbing he was replacing. I will let him fill in the details.


Tim: It was not fun, I hope to not repeat this again in my lifetime, amen. 


When Tim was finished, it was my turn to get to work. Yes, I tore apart the bed so Tim could do his job on the macerator pump. Remember the black water holding tank is under our v-berth so I emptied the contents of the storage space for a rework. Remember the last post, I was waiting to do the rework until Tim did this job. Its 2200 and Tim helped me wrestle the spare mainsail into the storage area. I put a few more things into the space and then it was completely packed! A few of the items I removed did not go back…where will I put that stuff now? I will figure it out eventually.

With the v-berth storage fully packed it was time to embark on the 30 minute bed remaking! hate this job, we’ll just call it sheet wrestling. You can’t walk around and tuck things in like a normal bed, you’re on top of the bed, in the way the whole time. Try this at home, see what it’s like. Pictures are included with this entry of the process: clean the bottom, add the middle wedge and boat cushions, add the memory foam, then the barrier: down comforter over the foam, now the bottom sheet, top sheet, blankets and finally! It is finished! Phew! Let’s hit the sack it’s after 2300!

Sea Day 14 San Diego Bay and Ocean to Mexico Waters 10/14/2016

Lynette: Today we sailed into Mexican Waters to the north of the Mexican Coronados. We left at 1130 and returned at 1730. It was a nice sail but we sure wish that we could get some stronger winds to sail with and work out our gear. I’m very tired just being back from driving and then sailing all afternoon.
​

While we were our sailing I noticed that the dutchman had come undone, not just one but both of them. The Dutchman allows the sail to come nearly straight down and flake back and forth for an orderly and quick drop of the sail. That meant that when Tim lowered the sail it would pile in a heap rather than fold. As Tim lowered the mainsail at the end of our sail, a screw landed on the deck. A large screw…uh oh! Where did that come from? That is the second screw we have had fall to the deck, the first was quite small, this one was from a larger item. As soon as we were back in the slip, Tim went to work hunting down where it came from, knowing that it could have come from higher up the mast.Tim also rethreaded the dutchman lines and was able to reconnect the lines.

The screw…it came from the gooseneck. What is the gooseneck? It is what holds the boom to the mast. There are 6 screws in our gooseneck. Now one was missing…what about the other 5? Are they in bad shape about to shake out too? I will let Tim fill in these details…

Tim: When I was lowering the mainsail, a screw hits the deck, hmm, that's not good! So when we got to the slip, we started looking for where it might belong. Well, we found it, the gooseneck, which holds the boom to the mast-- one of the most important connections on a boat. Tons of forces gather at this junction. It is not the heavy gale that breaks this, but the rolling and flopping in light winds and big swells. So since we want to go sailing again, I began to investigate how the other screws were doing. Out of 6 1/4-20 screws on the gooseneck, 2 were solid, the others were either stripped or about to be. It's called galvanic corrosion where two dissimilar metals are in a solution like salt-water, it creates a battery where in this case the aluminium (aluminium for my UK friends) gave electrons to the stainless steel screws and gooseneck. See the pictures below. It ended up taking 3 days to get completed, several trips to the store, advice and replacing broken parts. 

Over the past several days, we've been hearing a crackling sound in our hull, the other day the bilge pump ran for a while in the middle of the night. It ran the other day and I put my head in the bilge to look, which I do regularly before and after a sail. Remember rule number one is "keep the water out of the boat!" So as I'm laying on the floor with my head hanging down, I hear snapping, crinkling and popping sounds. I'm wondering do I have electrolysis issues, a short somewhere? If that the sound of water trickling down? It seems louder at night, maybe because all the noise of the marina calms down, no planes flying around etc. I've heard it before in Morro Bay, but I thought that was the ripples on the hull from the high winds. But what is it now? There's no wind. 
So being a good sailor I exhausted all of my faculties and Googled "crackling sounds in the bilge" and discovered I was not the only one who was tormented by this sound. My response was pretty tame compared to some who disconnected their batteries and in the complete darkness looked for sparks or leaks. Watch the video below to be amazed. A fiberglass hull is acting as a speaker for any sound under the sea. We've heard sonar from submarines resonating through the hull.