2016- A winter spent ashore in Florida

 After a great summer spent in the Adirondacks of NY dividing our time between our home and summer camp we moved south to spend winter 2016 at our home in Stuart Fl and had a great winter. Chris may not say so as she had a few surgeries involving wrist, elbow and torn rotater cuff. Needless to say she was in a sling most of the winter and time on the boat was out of the question but many hours of rehab and her favorite pastime of zumba and all is strong again. We were able to log lots of beach time and I was able to get in plenty of day sailing in the river

Boat projects:

Major Catastrophe Avoided - while motoring in the river near our home I apparently hit something with the prop and did some major damage. Loud clunking from below led me to quickly shut down the engine and sail back to the marina then call Sea tow(AAA for boats) to bring me into my slip. Turns out I Sheared off a blade of the prop, sheared off the strut that supports the drive shaft, bent the shaft, and worst of all broke the thru hull for the shaft. (major water ingress if happened at sea). Thankfully this occurred close to home and after getting hauled out all parts were readily available and I was able to perform all the work myself.

could have been worse if we were out at sea!

     Wind generator- Have always wanted to add a wind generator and finally found a deal I couldn’t pass up and hopefully this will allow us to avoid running the engine during cloudy periods when the solar panels can’t keep up.

Autopilot- Our autopilot has been with us for 3 boats over at least 25 years(the girls named it fred) and I can say Fred has been sworn at many times over the years. Having read that the newer units are much superior along with great rebates I bit the bullet and installed a new Raymarine pilot that interfaces with our Garmin chartplotter. Time will tell how much better this is. I was able to find a used instrument pod and modified the pedestal guard so everything is easily accessible.  Sold our old unit along with another unit I had in storage on ebay for what I thought were crazy high prices.

my new instrument pod