Life has been insanely crazy for the past month. Mostly engulfed by deadline and a trip to Oregon for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. It was great fun but PHWEW! Soooo glad it’s done.
Last month, Rob and I spent a couple days fitting our ‘new’ Monitor windvane on Tess. Rob managed to get the body set up with halyards while I was at work.
When I got there, we read and re-read the instructions and set to work. We tweaked, tugged, eyeballed, measured, tweaked some more and finally got the beast level. Measure twice, cut once. We probably should have measured a third time. We installed the first arm, then readjusted everything to relevel and attach the second arm.
Hmmm. Something’s not quite right. We have no idea how it happened but, to get the Monitor level, the second arm had to be installed way out of whack.
That’s frustrating for me because I like linear, orderly installations. (One time Rob played a joke on me by randomly rearranging my bookshelf. No longer did the books go from tall to short and I had to fix them immediately — not that I have OCD or anything . . .)
Our next challenge was the outboard bracket. Wild tangent: remember how we really needed a longshaft outboard because the motor kept popping out of the water whenever there was a teensy bit of chop or wake? We took a little Nissan we picked up at a swap meet for next to nothing to the local Nissan repair guy. He rebuilt the motor (the previous owner had stored the motor upside down with saltwater in it — a bad thing, as it turns out) and ‘Frankensteined’ it. Now we have a nice juicy longshaft!
Anyway, we quickly realized that there would be no way the lower port strut would be at the suggested angle because the outboard is in the way. Luckily, Rob had already received the blessing from the company’s owner Hans. I had no choice but to accept the wonkiness.
Rob took a couple days to play with the lines and leads and all the other goodies, then took Tess out for a little sail. It was a light air day but sunny and beautiful. Coincidentally, my coworker JR was out shooting a race that day so he snapped a few of Rob.
“That Monitor is magic!” Rob still has a smile on his face!
