Better late than never…
Sorry to all the loyal readers for the long delay. Between Liz being back in town and Sage requiring a lot of attention, I haven’t been documenting things as much as I should have, but I’m back to catch you up on the status…
Sage is VERY close to being done. We had a few items of re-work to do, and with three boats at the waterfront the Balance team was stretched very thin. 482 #6, which launched a week after my boat, was on a tighter schedule, so I told the team that I could wait a little to get some of the issues fixed if it helped them get away on time. They left Cape Town on Thursday, so we are getting the full attention of the team now. She’s starting to look like a real boat!
Sage is still at the waterfront, but getting closer. Note the missing solar panels…
The Crew also arrived Thursday night. Captain Emmy, and Mark and Ed will be joining me on the crossing.
Emmy, Mark, and Ed with Table Mountain and the Marina.
The current plan is to get the boat ready by the 1st, but we’re a little behind. Shifting from “build mode” to “passage mode” is proving tricky. They could work on the boat forever, there’s always something to touch up or polish, but at some point we need to leave. So we’re scheduling some provisioning runs for later in the week. Instead we will take a long day sail on Tuesday, weather permitting, and try to get all the kinks worked out. We also need to put a few hours on the engines. I need to get the 50 hour service done before we leave.
As I mentioned, Liz is back as of August 19th, and her flight out is on Saturday the 3rd. It’s possible we will leave before she goes, but more likely we will be checking out and getting ready, and depart on the 4th. It’s great to have her help and I wish she was coming along. She has other commitments, though, so I’ll kiss her goodbye and see her on the other side!
The tracker is getting set up, and will be at https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV-Sage/ . Right now it shows the default location off the coast of Africa, but once it pings in for the first time it will reflect our position.
The balance team has been working diligently. They replaced the sliding panel over the versa-helm because it was not sliding easily enough. In the process, I got one of the next generation parts which is infused carbon, replacing an infused foam sandwich panel. This saved a bunch of weight and the new slider is incredibly smooth and easy to use. I don’t speak for Balance, but I think all the boats going forward will have this feature. The process was not exactly quick, though, as it required the removal of half of the solar panels and their molded rack, so those need to be re-bonded and re-tested, which is scheduled for Monday.
We still hope to squeeze in a few tourist items with the crew. I’d like to take the crew up Table Mountain before we go. Today they went on the “Red bus” tour around Cape Town. It’s a typical hop on hop off tourist bus, and usually I don’t take those, but this one was pretty highly recommended. I liked it when I did it, so recommended that the crew take the day and do that.
Meanwhile Liz and I moved to another apartment, and I ran some boat errands. Liz and I are still living on land because I wanted to give the crew a cabin each for the time they are in Cape Town. Once we’re at see it will be 4 people, 3 cabins, so we’ll have the bunk in the saloon deployed, which is OK but not as nice as the real mattresses we have in the cabins.
Tariq from Jo Fensham fitting the custom made mattress protectors and sheets.
Spring is almost here, and were seeing some very nice days, so the hope is that Tuesday will be a good day to get the boat a real trial. I hope to finally see the big spinnaker unfurled. I promise I’ll post some pics of the sail!