Basically, there are two weekend events before the Mac.  The regatta on  5/29-5/30 in Bay City and the Tawas overnight/ invitational on 6/26-6/27.  These are the only opportunities for race with spinnakers and in the dark so it's important to get the Mac crew out for both weekends.  I still don't have a sixth crew for the Mac but I am working on it.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.

It appears that the SBYRA is inactive this season.  These races are run by BCYC which means better race management, race committee for start and maybe even finish, and Rush doesn't get to decide when to shorten course or cancel a race.  This may even increase participation.  They seem to have scheduled the same races as the SBYRA but bunched them in fewer weekend events.  They have another weekend regatta scheduled in early June but I will be out of town for that.  Let me know if you have can't make any of these races.

The A-kite is scheduled for delivery in mid May.  The sailmaker, Wally Cross from Detroit, will sail with us to teach us how to use it as well as give us some helpful hints on maximizing the general  performance of the boat.  Rather than ask him to join us for a race (the Harry A on 5/30, for example) I think it would be better if we  pick another evening with good wind when most of the crew can attend.  This way we can practice more without the constraints of the race  course or the weather.  This means scheduling the trial sail on short notice sometime in the second half of May.

I am also working with Signet Marine on an upgrade of our instrument  package.  As you may recall, we needed to repair one of the Signet  displays as well as fix the light on the Sailcomp.  There may be a way  to integrate the Sailcomp and GPS with the Signet system to display navigation data on the Signet displays with the NMEA 0183 outputs.  We would then have to replace the Raymarine depth and add a depth sensor for the Signet system.  The final result will be a total of six display fields for boat speed, windspeed/direction, depth, water temp and all navigation data on any of them.

The pre-launch task list looks something like this:

1.  Replace depth transducer

2.  Replace prop-shaft packing

3.  Clean bottom and check / repair infamous hairline crack

4.  Wash and wax hull

5.  Paint bottom

The rest can be finished after the launch.  The first race is on 5/20 so I will schedule a mid May launch.  I will work on items 1 and 2 in the next two weeks and plan to work on the hull in the first two weeks of May.  Gary, can you help with the prop shaft packing?  I haven't done this before and you mentioned that you used teflon packing on Alibi and it doesn't require a minimum drip rate.

Regards,

Emery