On the move again

Last night Marilyn and I met at the yacht club for their annual lobster dinner.  It wasn’t that great a dinner but we hadn’t really expected it to be very good because we were going for the companionship rather than the meal so that was OK. 

Marilyn flew in from Kelowna and I brought Gray Hawk over from Cow Bay.  I had a bunch of clean up to do in the morning because I have been busy removing and mounting new electrical gadgetry.  I had made a serious mess but I’m really happy with the results.  We now have a Xantrex/Heart Interface remote control panel to operate our inverter and a Balmar regulator to control our alternators.  The only thing missing from the complete project is replacing the monitor functions of the old Link system with a Trimetric 2025.  When I’m all done we’ll have three separate devices replacing the Link 2000-R system.  In the process I’m removing a lot of surplus wiring.  The Link may have combined everything into one visible panel but there were two additional hidden panels plus a very complicated shunt that appears to actually combine three shunts into one device in order to presumably monitor dual battery banks.  All of that stuff was connected by a maze of wiring that is now stored away for future use.

After I got everything squared away I had a pleasant trip over to the yacht club which was followed by an equally pleasant wait in the bar until Marilyn’s flight arrived.  The friends that we were meeting for supper arrived shortly after Marilyn did and then we drank our way to 7:00 when our seating was scheduled for.  The lobster was OK but I’ve had better – the club kitchen isn’t really equipped to prepare 60 lobsters in under 2 hours.  Everyone else at our table had the surf and turf so they also got a very small piece of New York strip that didn’t look like a good swap for the extra half a lobster that I got.  But we had a great visit with Gerry and Shirley.  They just got back from a cruise through the Panama Canal so they had lots of stories to tell.  They are also ready for a haulout so we’re thinking that we may be able to coordinate both our haulouts and make a joint trip to Seattle at the same time.

This morning we had intended to cross the strait to Vancouver but we didn’t get up early enough.  It’s a fairly long trip that could take us up to 10 hours or maybe even a bit longer, depending on how the currents work out.  There’s no abundance of daylight at this time of year so tomorrow we’ll get up in the dark and be outside the harbour when the sun gets up.  I’m not wild about navigating into the North Van in the dark – I’m also not wild about navigating out of Tsehum Harbour in the dark – the entrance is a minefield of floats where idiots have dropped their crabpots.  We’ll likely spend a couple of nights in Vancouver, work in a trip to Popeye’s salvage and then head up the coast.  We might just hang out at Gibson’s or we might go all the way up to Pender Harbour.