As Kathleen described, we spent the Easter weekend working on Kinship. When you buy a boat, you are never quite sure what you actually did buy. It is only when you get aboard and start to look at all the systems and lockers in much more detail that you really start to understand the boat and its contents. One of my favourite parts of this is finding the little gems that the previous owner left on board. Over the weekend we found a spare water pump and a fortress anchor and rode hidden in a locker that I missed in the survey, both really good to have. As I am writing this I realise that I did not look in one area on the boat at all, the generator compartment, we don’t have a generator, I wonder what might be in there?
We are addressing the critical items from the survey, first on the list was replacing the starting battery. Naturally, the new battery was slightly taller than the old one, so I had to reposition the hold-downs to suit. In becoming one with the battery compartment I was really impressed with both the construction of the boat and the quality of the work done on the boat in the past. I am a great believer in the idea that to really own something, you have to work on it. It will take a while before we really own Kinship, but today, I own the battery compartment. I did discover that each of the 4 solar panels has its own controller. This is great as shade on one panel will not impact the rest of the array.
The adjustable backstay project went well, Jack, Zahniser’s rigger, did a great job with the install, I am a still getting used to the size of everything on Kinship, Penny has a 1 inch block on the end of the backstay and the adjuster is a 12:1 system I built out of Amsteel and 1/4 line. Kinship has a 4ft long hydraulic adjuster going to a 4 inch block, the scale is so much bigger, to deal with the higher load and to allow a bigger safety margin.
The fun is just beginning, in May I will be at the boat for a week to make sure all the systems are working before we head back to Kingston.
