Rigging Inspected, Bottom Activated, Great Sail

Today was a beautiful and productive day for us! Kim W. from the Anacapa Boat Yard came by our slip this morning to inspect the rigging. He thoroughly inspected the standing and running rigging. It was a treat to watch him hoist himself aloft. Overall the rigging was found to be very solid. He suggested we regularly lubricate the turnbuckles and other moving parts with a product called Aero Kroil to prevent seizing. He tested the roller furling and demonstrated that the furling line pretty much fills the drum when the sail is unfurled. Reducing the furling line diameter with a new smaller line or removing a couple of strands from the existing line should make it work better. The masthead tri-color and steaming lights worked OK, but the deck light was missing a bulb. Other than that, the rigging and equipment aloft got a clean bill of health.

At the same time, Basey Shane from Basey's Bottoms came by to give us a quote on his bottom cleaning service and "re-activate" the anti-fouling bottom paint. Since the boat was sitting out of the water in the boatyard for several months after the bottom was re-painted, the bottom paint needed to be lightly scrubbed to re-activate its anti-fouling properties. We should now be ready for a regular bottom cleaning service. We will have Basey remove, clean, and re-lube the new aluminum prop every 3-6 months to ensure that it does not seize to the SS shaft. He liked the new easier to replace split zinc anodes that Steve installed last week.

We then ate lunch and took her out for a wonderful sail! We had 15-20 knot winds with 3-6 foot swells. We set the reefed main in the harbor and pulled out the Genoa as we passed the jetty. We sailed out to the oil drilling platform Gina and back. We were sailing at 3.5 to 5 knots out while close hauled heading into the swells and 5.5-6.5 knots on the return at a broad/beam reach running with the swells on our port quarter. The Matrix 27 sailed wonderfully. She was very stable, had a neutral helm, and rolled with the swells very naturally. We only took a few splashes of water when some of the largest swells caught us off guard. We got to experiment with our new hand held Garmin GPS and used it to verify the accuracy of our knot meter.

On the way back to our slip we stopped off at Coast Chandlery to get a replacement tank for our LPG (Safegas) stove. Now we just need to figure out how to use the stove! Back at the slip we realized that the diesel motor dripped some oil on our freshly cleaned teak & holly cabin floor. I didn't see any obvious leaks... so we'll have to keep an eye on this. The boat washed down nicely and is ready to be sailed again later this week.