Pilot; 1975; Ah!!
And it is. The snow seems to have finally buggered off now, but unsurprisingly, it's hardly toasty. Epoxy basically takes a day to set off, so you do a bit and then have to wait 'til tomorrow before you can progress on that piece. And the boat is a one and a half hour drive away instead of being conveniently in the back garden, where you can just nip out and do a bit if the sun feels like shining for a few minutes. Other than that, everything is brilliant :)

I've just noticed we have an 'X post' button thing on the bottom of the blog posts now. I assume that's the X formerly known as Twitter. Allow me to say right here that I have absolutely no interest in that nonsense. Actually, although I do post occasionally on Facebook, I am seriously doubting that even that is worth bothering with. Its one benefit (as I see it) is that some of you can post things to the SV Tapatya Friends page - Frans posting AIS tracking updates is a fine example of something I appreciate and has real value. I guess, thinking about it as I type, I shall carry on putting a bit up there from time to time. Please feel free to join our group Facebook page :)

Link to SV Tapatya Friends on Facebook

They keep on rolling by! We spent the Christmas week in England; took in a footy game, spent some quality time with family, ate too much; had a twelve hour drive each way; and then came back in time for new year.

Meanwhile the winter project list is progressing quite well. I have built the foresail sheet horse come dinghy storage - this will be a big improvement as it gets the dreaded inflatable dinghy out of the lazarette and into a safe storage location on deck, thereby freeing up significant room in the laz :). I've purchased and received a very good looking and fairly pricey new tiller pilot autopilot from the US company, Pelagic. I have quiet hopes that it will do the job! The windvane construction, from the plans I purchased from Alan of Wave Rover fame, is coming along nicely. I've adjusted the construction to suit my ideas of how it should be built and am happy thus far. It's a trim tab windvane and the tower element (that is the actual wind vane bit) is pretty much finished and I'm now working on the trim tab element. That's coming along nicely, though I say so myself! Details of the windvane project can be seen in the videos, starting with episode 307.

I have also fitted a fairly expensive VHF radio remote unit (it's hard wired) that will allow me to be able to use the VHF while in the cockpit area. This was something I discovered could be a necessity on my sea trials. That'll be a nice-to-have :)

I have purchased an inflatable kayak that I shall be taking with me next time. The quite nice Aquarib dinghy that I bought with the idea that it'd be comfortable and safe for Karin and I to use turned out to be far too big to store in a deflated state. It has a hard aluminium floor, which is quite lovely, and a hard transom. All of this means it packs away to a rather large roll with another rather large bag of floor boards and bits and bobs. The double-ender lazarette of the Benford dory is simply not big enough to store all of that. I shall be using the kayak or an Avon Redcrest that I have in the future. The Redcrest packs away much smaller and I'll find a spot for the deflated kayak somewhere.

I'm in the process of making a new tiller - I shall keep the first one as a back up. I'm making it in ash, laminated to size. The tiller itself is finished, but I still have the stainless fitting to fabricate. Several of the other little jobs are underway; I'm fairly confident we'll be ready come springtime. I'll see if I can take a few photos and get them up here...