So I took a morning off from working on the boat or sailing and went up to Novato to take two Amateur radio tests–the Technician and General class–and passed both, which had me pretty pumped up. This is tangentally related to sailing since the General class license is required to operate the Marine SSB in the “ham” frequencies. But it’s not really a transpac related certification. One cool thing is that I’ll be able to test my SSB install by calling Dave in Mill Valley on the ham bands, which will make testing a lot more effective.
Other than that, I spoke-shaved and cut up a piece of ripped teak to use as cockpit bench toerails for the driver. And I spent a couple hours trying to figure out the optimum balance of time/money/weight/usabilty for the emerency steering system.