Happy New Year everyone! In less than six months this blog is due to become very active as we chronicle our journeys on Pasargada. Right now we are still working our day jobs and spending spare time getting the boat ready to go and the house ready to sell.

I finished sewing new track sliders on the storm trysail on January 1st. The old bronze sliders were corroded because the sail had been stored without salt being washed off. The toughest part of replacement was probably removing the old sliders, cutting through the old webbing. All ten sliders are now replaced with stainless sliders and 1/2 tubular webbing attachment hand-stitched on. We took the spare sails out this fall to try attaching them. The bronze hanks on the staysail were fine and we were able to rig up the new inner forestay created by Brion Toss and team and attach it to that. However, the trysail had clearly had salt spray at some point and still had salt on it. Clearly never used for heavy weather, but probably stored on deck to be ready. Glad to have that project done. I hope my stitching was good enough to stand up to heavy weather. I hope we don’t have to use it often. Pictures of old and new sliders below.

We also have been several years behind on refreshing varnish of some things in the cockpit areas. The great thing about having 3.5 bathrooms in our house is that the lower bathroom is a great place for projects. The counter is huge and, as seen in the third picture below, has been great for adding three new coats of varnish after sanding down the existing layers and trying to clean up some spots where the varnish is worn out. If I wanted a super-pretty look, I could have stripped it all the way down and bleached the stains but it’s not worth it to us to do that now.

Next I’ll need to re-do the hatch boards. That will be hard because one has those slats in it. Just sanding that down will be a challenge. And I’ll have to do one side at a time.

I mentioned the 3.5 bathroom house. It is big for us and there is a lot to get rid of and/or store before we go. This is also a lot of work. Especially when you have more space than you need and more hobbying interests than you have time for. I’ve been pretty thankful for the local BuyNothing groups. Knowing that Goodwill sends many donations to landfills I’m always quite happy when I can easily give away to a neighbor online. I really don’t have the time or financial incentive to hold a yard sale for a lot of the items we need to get rid of. We have been able to sell some stuff via eBay.

I’m sure we will be sharing more on our preparation. Right now at the boat, my sibling is helping my spouse on a project to add a new water tank level sender in to the water tank. The old one is corroded in place so he’s going to try to get a new one rigged into the inspection panel instead. So they have to remove the salon table and the floorboards to get at the lower water tank.

We also currentlyhave the aft headliner out so that we can install a third winch. This came from learning from the Mahina Expedition how they reef their headsail. Unfortunately we need to add it on the side of the cockpit where the blocks for the wind vane are installed, so we will also have to re-rig that onto the other side.

Our current planned departure date is June 27th so that we can get to Saturna Island in time for Canada Day festivities and then circumnavigate Vancouver Island before we head south from Neah Bay to San Francisco.