Our journey on the sailboat Good as Gold

Sometimes we have to fix things and sometimes we want to make changes to things.  There is a “to do” list that grows, changes, shrinks, gets re-written and gets re-prioritized.  It’s actually not a list, but a “Boat Maintenance” notebook that Malcolm fixates on from time to time (but that’s a whole other story). The new solar panels took over the radar arch and left the antennas and radar dome waiting for their new home. “Move antennas and radar to new post and connect cables” has been written into the Boat Maintenance book.  There is an “H” next to this for HIGH priority, and an asterisk next to the “H” for “Must do before leaving Mexico”.   Last year, we found that one of the steering cables was slightly frayed. “Replace steering cables” has been in the Boat Maintenance book ever since.  It also has an “H” and an asterisk.  If we’re actually going to go to the South Pacific, we better get these things done. First, the steering cables.  We’re at a dock so we probably don’

Back in December, Malcolm was working on the boat and didn't watch his step while climbing down.  It all happened quickly and there were lots of bad words.  The nice doctor confirmed what Malcolm already knew, another broken foot. It wasn't that bad, as we were staying at the dock in La Paz. In fact, the dockmaster had a wheelchair that we could borrow, Thanks to Rob (on Avant), a photo was posted on Facebook and Malcolm's secret was out. Nice doctor putting a cast on Malcolm's foot The plaster cast didn't last long, so we picked up a walking cast. The whole episode is over now. The foot is fine and Malcolm doesn't want to talk about it.

We are energy self-sufficient!! Thanks to our new solar panels, we have lots of electricity to run our fridge, freezer, navigation instruments, vacuum cleaner and so on. We haven’t relied on our other sources of electricity (engine, generator, wind generator, shore power) since we hooked up the solar panels. The boat came with two solar panels on the radar arch. The positioning of the original panels, and their small size meant that we didn’t get a lot of power from them. On the drive down from Vancouver this past fall, we stopped into a store in Arizona and purchased some new panels. We got the biggest ones that would fit onto the radar arch. The radar arch needed some adjustments to handle our new panels. Namely it needed to be strengthened for the additional weight and the radar dome and antennas on the arch had to move to make room for these great big panels. These changes also meant we’d have to change the way our dinghy (Tubby) was lifted. Thanks to some great stainl