Anchor Chain, Then The Delta

It's been a busy few days with Intermezzo.

On Friday, Renee and I upgraded the main anchor chain. We swapped out 165 feet of 5/16" BBB chain for 300 feet of 3/8" G40 high test chain. The new chain is arguably too strong and too heavy, but it's what's supposed to be mated with our big Rocna 33 anchor. If nothing else it will help me worry less when we leave the boat anchored somewhere unmanned.

The chain swapping operation involved moving almost 800 pounds of chain around (we had to buy a 400 foot drum of new chain to get the best price and bring the old chain home). Thanks to Bob Hennessy at KKMI for letting us use the crane to get the drum on the dock.  We're trying out brightly colored zip ties to mark lengths of chain so we know how much we are letting out when anchoring.

Sunday was a great sail from Richmond to Potato Slough in the San Joaquin River Delta. We flew our Code 0 sail early in the day in lighter winds. We've struggled with this sail in the past. The original top swivel made it almost impossible to furl. We replaced it with a beefier one and that seems to have done the trick; worked flawlessly. The wind strengthened all day until in the late afternoon it was blowing a steady 20-plus knots with gusts nearly 30. We ended up sailing with just a double reefed main to keep the boat under control in narrow river channels. It worked great. We even sailed upwind with decent VMG under this minimal sail configuration.

It's Monday night now. Renee stayed on the boat until this afternoon and then I gave her a high speed water taxi ride in the dinghy to a nearby marina where she grabbed the car we left there and headed back to work. She'll be back on Thursday. Until then, I'm hanging out, working on the boat in "paradise". Spent today wrestling with a malfunctioning marine toilet.  Yuck.