Spilling more money ..

.. to cross another ocean, whenever this plague lets us.

Since the Panama Canal, we got new sails, a genoa and a main sail. We bought a new low friction track for the main sail sliders too, the old one was sun burned and brittle. We re-did the non-skid on the decks, we got an AIS transponder so ships and authorities can track us. We got the first shots of Covid-19 vaccine, another road trip to the US in a couple of weeks will give us that "vaccine passport", that surely will be required for future travel.

During the last week, we also replaced all the standing rigging. Part reason is insurance, but it is also getting old with more than 10 years and many miles on it, since we changed it last time, 2011, in Palau.

It took some extra logistics to get all parts to Mexico: Friends with a new boat got a decent discount for the wire in San Diego, and brought it across the border. Another friend doing an across border run detoured a day to pick up the wire and bring it to us. For the mechanical terminals we paid a Mexican to ship to his grand mother in San Diego, then he brings it across the border. There he puts it on "Baja-Pack", a local logistics company, that puts the packages on the local long distance buses to transport to the closest (to us) Baja Pack station in Loreto. There, a marina employee picked it up for us. Amazingly, nothing got lost!

Up the mast work was Silvie's job, it is easier to crank her up than the other way around. Dirk did the grunt work like cutting of the wire and put the mechanical fittings on it, to the correct length and hoist it back up to Silvie, who mounted it in place of the old.

We are all done today with this standing rigging replacement, except the forestay, which will need a dock to lay on, to fish the 3/8" (10mm) stainless wire through 53 ft of furling mechanism. It worked well last time, so we do that when we are at a dock again.

The new hardware is nicer than the old, better design and better machining, the pic shows left the new HW, with the old to the right. Specifically the pin in the toggle is much nicer than the old, cast T-bolt. Disregard the excess of caulking (it is Butyl) under the chain-plates covers, it needs a couple of hot days to squeeze out more Butyl by tightening down the chain-plate covers, then we remove the excess Butyl.