Today was a very busy day getting the boat ready for the start.

We had a bit of a scare as we were trying to fix a problem with the cigarette lighter on the boat that we use to charge all of the stuff that takes regular power. After opening up the electrical panel and fixing a lead that had come off, we started to test the system and we found that once we started the autopilot the whole system would shut down and we’d have no power anywhere. Poor Greg toiled belowed trying to fix the problem, while I went about ticking off things on our long list. Eventually we call a marine electrician that found we had a faulty lead on of the batteries. He also gave us a a general electrical “check-up” and cleaned up a few things for us. Everything works now and we are pretty confident that we have a good electrical system.

Around 1300, I registered the boat in the race. This is always such a stressful process, produceing documents and numbers for everything. We were pretty well prepared for this though.

The Captain’s meeting was at a local community hall and we got a very thorough overview of the logistics for both the start tomorrow and for our arrival in Bermuda. There is so much to think about and organize between customs arrangements, shipping schedules, call in schedules etc.

Tonight we finished packing the bins (navigation, kits, and food). You have to be so careful when you are packing all this stuff, making sure that you haven’t forgotten anything, and knowing exactly where everything is so we can find it in a hurry.

I’m looking forward to a good sleep, as tomorrow is going to be a very busy day.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 5:33 am and is filed under Sailing, Minimus Sailing Team, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.