Busy Start to the Week Off The Boat.

Its been a busy week, thanks in part to the good weather at the weekend giving me the psychological springboard to push towards completion.

That longer hour after work means I've been able to check on the boat after work in daylight, although the tide has so far been out when I've been down there. Next week the tides look ok to at least get on board and do small jobs. Anything that lasts about an hour will let me get it completed in daylight after work.

In the meantime on land I've been busy. I've completed the re-stitching needed on the spray hood and my next job over the next few days is to redo some of the missing stitching holding Sprite's name to the spray dodgers.

Finally once that's done I need to stitch up the sail cover which pulled apart in a small section of stitching when the wind caught it in the storms.

I've also ordered smaller stainless bottle jacks for the back stays to see if I can get them tightened up. I don't know if they'll be short enough but its worth a try.

I've also received the lettering for Sprite II's  name for her stern. That way when the spray dodgers are off people will know who she is! I'm not sure if putting the name on from a pitching dinghy is a good idea, or whether I should leave it until I put her on the beach for a weekend in the next few months.

Being happiest when busy means I've also enrolled for a free online course at a college, which should help at work. It supposedly takes up 10 hours per week, so my workload should be quite high over the coming months!

My other hobby of tropical fish keeping kept me busy last night as I cleared all the filters and the tank out with a bit of spring cleaning.

Currently I'm also investigating some of the free chart plotting apps available for Android phones. Not a substitute for proper charts I know, but could come in handy as a handy pocketable aid. I'll report back later on just how good a free app can be or if it can be any good at all. So far just the difficulty of getting the app and map downloaded and talking to each other is a major put-off.

So at the moment I've got lots going on!